


If I Have To Hold Up The Sky

by zombiebatch



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Sherlock (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:07:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiebatch/pseuds/zombiebatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benedict and Martin and the zombie apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This pretty much goes without saying since we are not, at present, experiencing a zombie apocalypse, but none of this actually happened. Or is even likely to happen, for that matter. This is entirely the product of my imagination and the result of my belief that everything is better with zombies.

In the end, no one survived – that’s the thing about the apocalypse. It was easy to think of the end of the world as one event, a singular occurrence that came barreling through time and obliterated everything in its path. And for some, for those who did not make it, that was exactly how it happened. For them, the end came quickly. But for the others, the end was a slowly-progressing story illustrated with abandoned city streets and the crumbling husks of old brick buildings and slow-creeping vines that twisted and wrapped around the wreckage – nature’s first act of reclamation. That story would be told over the next several years, as time claimed the post-apocalyptic stragglers who clung desperately to all that remained of humanity.

But these were still the earliest days of the end of the world.

There were those who’d always lived like the end was right around the corner. They spent their lives planning ahead, keeping their pantries stocked with tins upon tins of food, honing their gun skills and sharpening their knives in an attempt to stay several steps ahead of certain doom. They operated under the belief that only the prepared would stand any chance of survival – and they would be half right – the prepared stood the _best_ chance of survival, but sometimes others got lucky.

Some people would succumb quickly.

But others would take a much longer time fending off the inevitable.

Benedict Cumberbatch was about as prepared for the zombie apocalypse as anyone else. It was something he’d only considered in a playful context, like choosing the person with whom he’d most like to be stranded on a desert island. And he assumed, as most do, that he wouldn’t be around to see the end anyway, that the inevitable final days of humanity were fixed far into the future. He imagined a swollen blood-red sun obscuring the sky, fire-tailed comets raining down upon the earth, the screams of the fearful drowned out by the din of the end of the world.

He’d heard the warnings about what the media playfully called the “zombie virus”, just like everyone else did, but he and Martin Freeman flew out to L.A. for the premiere anyway. Even when the tone of the news on the televisions and the radios and the live feed on his mobile went from bemused disbelief to gravely serious: _everyone stay inside, board up your windows and doors, stay away from cemeteries and if you’re bitten may God have mercy on your soul because the CDC sure as hell won’t_ , he and Martin still decided to take their chances and go out on town together. (“One last hurrah before the a-fucking-pocalypse?” Martin had joked. And Benedict grinned in response. Anything for a bit of Martin’s attention, really. Even taking a chance on dinner at a posh L.A. restaurant with the threat of a zombie apocalypse nipping at the world’s heels.)

And they’d enjoyed their night out too. There were drinks (a few too many) and laughs ( _countless_ laughs, and still there were never enough). Benedict was well-practiced in ignoring the things he adored about Martin and there was _plenty_ to ignore that night: the way Martin liked to lick his lips and the way he idly twirled the cocktail straw with his tongue or the way his entire face seemed to glow with mirth every time Benedict said anything even remotely amusing.

For a moment, everything was exactly as it should have been.

Just as Benedict and Martin were playfully bickering about who was going to pick up the check (Benedict offered to foot the entire bill but Martin was staunchly opposed: “It’s not like it’s a _date_ , Benedict").

Some say it started at the hospital morgue, with the sound of undead hands pounding against the doors. Some swear (incorrectly) that it all began at the cemetery when the recently buried clawed their way through their caskets and dug through the dirt and took snarling, hungry gasps of air. Some didn’t even know it had started until they felt teeth tearing away at their flesh and realized that the media had been right – the dead were rising. It was happening. And within the span of a few hours, the streets were flooded with them, some whose mouths were already soaked with blood. Cars either screeched and stopped or kept on driving, running down the reanimated corpses and leaving them severed and twitching and bleeding in the street.

“What do we do?” Martin had asked from across their table at the disgustingly ostentatious  restaurant Benedict had chosen (partially because of its proximity to Benedict’s hotel since he’d been toying with the idea of asking Martin to stay the night – _in the event of an apocalypse, please locate the nearest object of your affection and cling to him like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do even though you know it’s wrong so wrong and you’re not supposed to be this in love with him and you were supposed to be over this ages ago and stop looking at him that way he’s going to know how  you feel if he doesn’t already._ )

“What else can we do?” Benedict replied. “We get the hell out of here.”

So they ran.

They pushed through the crowd and made their way to the rear door of the restaurant down the street, dodging the hordes of the risen and ducking behind buildings, slipping undetected through the back door to Benedict’s hotel. It was safe, at least for the moment. Even against the hollow echo of the stairwell and in the long, windowless hallways they could still hear the groans of the undead and the screams of the living who’d be joining the ranks of the undead soon enough. And even when Benedict slammed the door to his hotel room, bolted it shut and shoved the sofa against it for dubiously good measure, he felt as if he was still inhaling that thick, acrid stench of necrotic flesh and blood.

Martin immediately tried the phones – first his mobile ( _you’ve reached the voice mail of—_ ) and then the clunky old land line phone ( _your call could not be completed as dialed_ ).When he couldn’t take it anymore, the land line phone met a violent end and the gilded hotel wallpaper suffered a nasty gash as a result. Benedict didn’t even bother trying to pretend that he didn’t understand why Martin was fuming – if his wife and children (provided that he had them, of course) were on the other side of the world and humanity was starting to crumble beneath the weight of the living dead, Benedict knew he’d act the same way.

Already, Benedict knew that separating from Martin wasn’t going to be an option, and the idea wasn’t broached by either man. They were both aware of the same fundamental truths:

It was the end of the world.

They were all they had.

Benedict and Martin did not sleep that night. They watched the city below them fall to pieces, witnessing the carnage and the bloodshed from their (hopefully) untouchable perch.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Martin asked, shaking his head.

“We’ll go out tomorrow,” Benedict replied. “We’ll check for survivors in the morning, sneak down to the hotel kitchen and find food, maybe see if there’s something in the basement that we can use as a weapon. It’s too dangerous to go out there right now and we can’t defend ourselves without a plan.”

“Do you think this is it, Benedict? Do you think this is— _it_?”

They watched L.A. bleed and burn before their eyes and felt the undead teeth tearing at the flesh of civilization. The distance did nothing – their hearts still ached on behalf of the fallen.

“Yes,” Benedict said, and he fought the urge to reach for Martin’s hand. “Martin, I really think it is.”

~

_Three days._

_Has it really only been three days?_ Benedict couldn’t _believe_ that he and Martin had managed to live like this for three days now, sequestered in the relative safety of the hotel. They knew all along that eventually their meager stash of supplies would run out and their hastily-constructed barriers would break down and they’d have to set out on their own in search of safety – they just hadn’t counted on it happening so soon.

Benedict had to admit that the idea of spending an extended period of time holed up in a five-star hotel with Martin _you have no idea how smitten I am with you, you stupid foul-mouthed tosser_ Freeman had crossed his mind, but definitely not within the context of a zombie apocalypse. His mental images involved a lot more sweat-damp skin and breathless moaning and _don’t you dare stop_ and _fuck that feels amazing_ and no threats of being devoured by the living dead, but survival took priority over lust and for the most part, he was able to compartmentalize his _stupid, misguided, completely inappropriate and absolutely fucking desperate_ longing.

He had to. Martin had been an absolute wreck. He’d gone off on a destruction spree worthy of Keith Moon, trashing nearly every item in the hotel room. Benedict let him. He understood. Although he did have to ask Martin to keep it down a bit. As the days passed and the number of survivors dwindled, the streets grew quiet and it was easier for the zombies, with their remarkably acute auditory abilities, to hear the sounds of the living.

Right now, Benedict was taking slow, tentative steps down the hallway, sledgehammer held aloft and gripped between slightly clammy fingers. He’d found the sledgehammer in the hotel basement on the morning after the uprising and had kept it at his side ever since. It wasn’t the most ideal weapon in this sort of situation but with a nice firm _thwack_ he could send a zombie doubling backward and then finish it off before it had a chance to lunge toward him again. Plus, it did not require reloading and skulking about a fine hotel with a large weapon made him feel quite a lot like Jack Nicholson in _The Shining_.

It was amazing how easily he’d been able to adapt to life among the undead. The hotel had proven to be a respectable fortress of sorts but what they had not been counting on was the threat of previously infected humans dying and rising within the confines of the hotel. And, much to his chagrin, Benedict was the one with the responsibility of loosening their tethers to the mortal world. It was _barely_ killing, or at least that’s what he told himself when he first raised his sledgehammer and watched it smash open the skull of the zombie before him, sending bloody bits of flesh and bone flying in every direction. He took no pleasure in the destruction of a soul but he reconciled his unease with the idea that the zombie’s soul had been claimed long before his sledgehammer finished the job. There was nothing human left within it, only the vaguest shadow of motor skills and insatiable appetite for flesh.

Benedict pressed himself against the edge of the wall and waited. He could hear that telltale shuffle of bare zombie feet against the carpet. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Not now. He’d been lucky so far, but quick thinking was nothing without skill. He was pleased to find, however, that he was rather good at dispatching the undead. He had no idea why it came so naturally to him, but he had a knack for survival and on top of that, he was mostly able to disconnect himself from the act of zombie-killing: _pretend you’re acting. Pretend you’re getting into character. Pretend this is all one big zombie film and soon the director is going to yell “cut” and you’ll get to go home and take a nice, long shower and curl up with a good book and a cigarette_.

But pretending wasn’t always easy, especially as the zombie drew nearer, its bloody snarl growing louder and louder. Benedict knew he was running out of time.

 _Wait until it gets a bit closer. Dart forward. Swift blow to the head to stun it. Repeat until—until I kill it_.

He pursed his lips and took a broad, long-legged step away from the wall. He was exposed now, but the zombie was facing in the other direction and he suspected that he’d be able to take a few more quiet steps before it—

— _No._

It turned, sniffing, and Benedict winced. He’d forgotten about the keen sense of smell possessed by the undead.

The zombie staggered towards him, slow but menacing, and Benedict brandished the sledgehammer. When the zombie was in striking distance he cracked his weapon against its temple, and it stumbled backwards before it smacked against the ground. The zombie looked up at Benedict and bared its teeth, preparing to bite but before it could, Benedict swung again and with a snap and a crack that made Benedict’s chest ache in sympathy, he split the zombie’s skull in two and the hotel walls received a nice fresh coat of blood and brains.

He watched the zombie bleed out on the carpet and tried to desensitize himself to the sight. With a grimace, he took another swing at the zombie’s skull. He didn’t enjoy the gratuitous violence but he also knew that it was better to be cautious than squeamish.

Benedict continued down the stairwell toward the hotel kitchen. They’d been living off of the leftover hotel food since the uprising began and although he was certain that the majority of it would have been picked off by scavengers and the other stranded occupants residing within the hotel, he figured that it would be worth a shot. Besides, he and Martin would need a decent meal before they moved on.

He opened the kitchen door. Just as he suspected, the kitchen was almost completely empty. He pushed aside a few pots and pans and managed to locate a sack of nearly-fresh oranges – a spectacular find. Carefully, he ventured further and managed to get his hands on a half-empty box of cereal and a few bottles of water. He tucked it all into his backpack. It wasn’t much, but it was something and he hoped Martin wouldn’t be disappointed with his meager offering.

“We can’t keep doing this.” Benedict said after he’d finished his mercifully zombie-free trek back to the hotel room he and Martin had been sharing. He locked the door behind him and dumped the contents of his backpack on the bed. (They shared the room but not the bed – Benedict didn’t even try to come up with an excuse for them to bunk up so he’d been sleeping on the floor for the past few nights.)

“Doing what?” Martin asked quickly. “Oh. You mean—”

“—It’s getting rough out there,” Benedict said, taking an orange from the sack and passing the rest to Martin. “Other people have been raiding the hotel kitchen besides us. I’m guessing some other people had the same idea we did – hide out in here. And now they’re either dead, _un_ dead, or too scared to make a sound. _And_ , I ran into another zombie. Looked— _new_. And we need better weapons. I can’t keep beating them over the head with this thing.” He nodded in the direction of the bloodied sledgehammer.

“Phones are still out too.” Martin said, gesturing toward his mobile. Benedict didn’t say anything, but he knew that they were sharing the same thought. Martin hadn’t been able to get in touch with Amanda and the children since the night of the uprising. After the second day, when Benedict caught Martin wiping away tears and flipping through the photographs in his wallet, he made a solemn vow to stay with Martin under any circumstances.

“I see you took care of the zombie, then.” Martin said, getting an eyeful of Benedict’s bloodied clothes.

“Wasn’t too bad,” Benedict said. “But we have to remember that they have a really good sense of smell, though. Hearing, too. They’re not too fast so taking on one or two at a time is fine but we need to be really careful and not get cornered by more than three. I can’t handle more than three.”

_And I can’t handle the idea of getting infected by this zombie plague and leaving you._

Martin nodded and reached into the box for a handful of cereal.

“Where are we going to go?” Martin asked as he chewed.

“Don’t know,” Benedict said. “Somewhere relatively remote, I should think. We can’t stay in the city, I know that much. It’s not safe.”

“What about hospitals?” Martin asked. “Lots of medical supplies, lots of food. We could probably hide out in one of those for a day or two, don’t you think?”

“Lots of medical supplies, lots of food, lots of recently deceased people who were infected with the virus and can’t wait to rise up and kill us,” Benedict said with a sigh. “It’s a good idea in theory, but we’re better off in a less populated area.”

“Sorry,” Martin said. “Just—just trying to help, I guess. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t either.”

“You’re better at this than I am,” Martin said, shaking his head. “I’m glad that—well, I’m glad one of us seems to know how this works. Fucking _zombie apocalypse_ , Ben.”

Benedict smiled out of the corner of his mouth. If anyone told him that he’d end up stuck in a hotel room with Martin Freeman at the veritable end of the world—well, he wouldn’t have believed him.

“Fucking zombie apocalypse.” Benedict said, raising his water bottle as if he were toasting to something. Martin raised his in return.

They showered (separately, much to Benedict’s dismay), dressed and packed up what remained of their belongings. Martin didn’t have anything – all of his clothes were off in another L.A. hotel. He didn’t ask Benedict if they’d mind stopping to get them and for that, Benedict was grateful.

“Ready?” Benedict asked as he placed his hand on the door.

“Ready.”

“We’ll take my motorcycle.” Benedict whispered as they started down the hallway.

“Now hold on just one second,” Martin said. “You mean—me. And you. On your—” he let out a loud laugh and Benedict whirled around, placing his hand over Martin’s mouth.

“ _Shh, Martin, they’ll hear you_. The motorcycle is all I have. I had it flown out here with me for a reason and—” his lips curled into a mischievous grin. “—unless _you_ want to drive, that is.”

“Hilarious,” hissed Martin. “Bloody hilarious, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, wait a minute,” Martin whispered as they continued down the hallway. “It’s going to be, what, me riding on the back of the motorcycle with you? Arms thrown over your shoulders? Hands around your waist? Fucking hell.”

Benedict cleared his throat.

“Zombie apocalypse and here I am riding off into the suns—sun _rise_ with Benedict Cumberbatch.”

“Shut _up_.” Benedict hissed.

The careless stream of words spilling from Martin’s lips were making Benedict think about things that did not involve obliterating zombies. He needed to stop thinking about how perfect Martin’s hands would feel around him. He needed to stop thinking about Martin digging his nails into Benedict’s skin. He _absolutely without question_ needed to stop thinking about Martin, wind in his hair and a devilish smile on his lips, leaning in and covering Benedict’s neck in kisses as they zipped down the highway together, ready to take on whatever disgusting undead creatures the apocalypse hurled at them.

“Hear anything?” Martin asked. “See anything?”

“Nothing.” Benedict said.

They were working their way down the stairwell now, their footstep echoes layering upon one another and making a dreadful racket despite their grave attempts at relative silence.

“Almost there,” Benedict said. “I don’t know how many there are going to be outside. It sounds quiet, but they might just be waiting.”

“What do you want me to do?” Martin asked.

“Stay clear of the sledgehammer and don’t let them bite you.”

“Cheers, Benedict.” Martin said, rolling his eyes.

“You don’t have a weapon,” Benedict said as they reached the exit. “Unless you’re looking to take them on with your bare hands. Just stay behind me. I’ll deal with whatever’s out there. My motorcycle is parked on the street about thirty feet away. At least it was the other night. If it’s not there—well, I guess we’re going to have to come up with some other plan, won’t we? But for now, stay back.”

“All right.”

Benedict leaned forward and pressed his hand to the door.

The similarities were what got to him. There were still buildings and cars and sunlight and blue sky. There was still just enough humanity for it to feel like a bad day instead of the end of the world. If not for the bloodied bodies lying in the street, some still twitching with faint glimpses of life and some completely still, everything would have seemed just as it had always been.

“It—how could—I thought it would be more—” Martin whispered.

“They weren’t prepared,” Benedict whispered back, still processing the sight before him. “They didn’t listen. _We_ didn’t even listen. We were just lucky. All these people, Martin…”

“They’re dead.” Martin said.

“They’re dead _now_ ,” Benedict corrected. “But something tells me not all of them are going to stay that way.”

He peered out around the doorframe and surveyed the damage, which was considerable.

“Is your motorcycle still there?” Martin asked.

“I can’t see it.”

He leaned out a bit further.

“It’s there,” Benedict breathed. “I can’t believe—it’s there. All right. We need to think this though. The sound of the motorcycle is going to raise hell. Literally. If we can walk slow enough and stay _quiet enough, Martin_ , we should be able to make it to the motorcycle without attracting any attention. Once I rev it up it’s all over and they’ll be pouring in from all sides so—just hold on to me, okay? Whatever you do, don’t let go of me.”

“All right.” Martin said, nodding.

Benedict opened the door a bit further and stepped onto the pavement.

Everything was covered in bodies and everything reeked of rotting flesh and blood. Crushed cars, stained and streaked in red zigzagged across the length of the street. Benedict shook his head as he stepped through the carnage, taking care to avoid stepping on a stray limb or some other disembodied bit of human that littered the ground.

“All this in three days,” Martin whispered. “Can you imagine?”

“Imagine?” Benedict whispered back. “Look around. It’s all right in front of us. Now hush.”

“Sorry.”

They continued at their slow but purposeful pace. Benedict tried to keep his eyes on both the motorcycle and the ground and tried not to think about how tantalizingly close he and Martin were about to be.

“Benedict!” Martin screamed.

Benedict spun around. One of the dead on the ground was apparently not as dead as they’d assumed. It had grabbed a handful of Martin’s leg and looked as if it was about to wrap its blood-encrusted mouth around it.

“It has my leg!” Martin grunted, attempting to free himself from the zombie’s grasp. “Benedict, it has my fucking leg!”

Benedict twirled the sledgehammer in his hands and held it high above his head.

“Do something!” Martin yelled.

“I—I don’t want to hit you by accident!” Benedict stammered.

“Just kill the fucking thing!”

Benedict took a deep breath and swung.

The sledgehammer narrowly missed the zombie’s head, slamming into the pavement instead. The impact separated the head of the sledgehammer from the handle and for a moment, Benedict was convinced that this was how it was meant to end. The zombie would tear a chunk of Martin’s leg then crawl toward Benedict and feast upon him as well. They’d die together and un-die together and spend the rest of their undead existences consuming the flesh of the living.

“No.” Benedict said aloud. He couldn’t bear to think of Martin dying like this. _Not Martin. Not the man I fell in love with the moment I met him, who is everything I’ll want and will never have, not sweet perfect beautiful gorgeous Martin who, right now, needs me to save him—_

And with that he gripped the handle of the sledgehammer and drove it straight through the zombie’s eye socket. The handle met with resistance at first but then slid through and punctured the brain. Upon impact, the zombie twitched and shivered and loosened its hold on Martin. Benedict stooped down, dropped the sledgehammer handle, grabbed the zombie’s head with his bare hands, spun it until he heard its neck snap and then slammed its skull against the pavement.

“Bloody fucking _hell,_ Benedict,” Martin panted. “That was close.”

By now, several zombies were aware of their presence and were beginning to shuffle toward them, their slack limbs swaying as they marched toward Benedict and Martin.

“You can thank me later,” Benedict said. “And forget about sneaking. For now, we have to run.”

He reached for the sleeve of Martin’s shirt and pulled him along toward the motorcycle. He reached into his pocket for his keys, mounted the bike and nodded his head in Martin’s direction, implying that he ought to do the same.

“Now remember, just hold on,” Benedict said. “And whatever you do—”

“—don’t let go of you, yeah.” Martin said. “Don’t worry. I’ll probably be holding on for dear fucking life.”

He dug his fingertips into Benedict’s shoulders and Benedict prayed that Martin didn’t feel the pang of desire that burned beneath them.

 _As you should_ , Benedict thought as he turned the key in the ignition. _As you very well should._


	2. Chapter 2

Benedict didn’t stop to think about where they were heading, only that they needed to get as far from the city as possible. It wasn’t easy, riding around the obstacles left behind by the undead, but the challenge appealed to him. Especially because, every time he sped over a particularly bumpy or otherwise perilous stretch of road, Martin held on that much tighter.

After what felt like ages, the wrecked remains of Los Angeles were behind them and they were riding down a suburban street that was just about as peaceful as a suburban street could be in the face of a zombie apocalypse. It was evident that this area hadn’t been hit as hard but the silence gave testimony to the absence of its residents. They’d undoubtedly cleared out at the first news of the zombie uprising and left all of their belongings behind although Benedict imagined that many were still sequestered in their basements, defenseless and afraid to emerge.

Benedict slowed his motorcycle a bit and took note of the surroundings. As he did, he felt Martin’s grip on him loosen, which was followed by a thud and a groan.

“Martin!” Benedict yelled, slamming on the brake.

Martin was lying on the ground, about ten feet away from the motorcycle. His jeans were torn and he was wincing in pain. When he moved his hand, he exposed a jagged, filthy laceration which was already beginning to bleed profusely.

“Fucking fucking _fuck_ , Benedict.” Martin seethed through gritted teeth.

“Blood,” Benedict said, hopping off the motorcycle and darting toward Martin as quickly as he could. “Fucking _blood_ , Martin. They’ll be able to— _fuck_ , Martin!”

“I know! I’m sorry, I—I shouldn’t have let go, but you slowed down so suddenly and—I know, I’m sorry, can we skip to the part where you bandage my leg and we’re in a comfortable hotel somewhere and I’m not lying in the road with my fucking leg split open?”

“I’d be more than happy to skip to that part. You know why we can’t? _We don’t have any bandages, Martin_.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I have some small ones I took from the hotel but they’d be useless on this. We need disinfectant, gauze…” he trailed off.

“And where do you think we’re going to get that?”

“There’s got to be something around here. Even if it’s just someone’s house, we could stop in and ask them for help.”

“‘We’? Benedict, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a little, how should I say, _unable to fucking move_.”

Benedict sighed. Martin was right. The wound looked shallow (albeit raw and painful) but there was no way of telling if Martin had sustained any other injures as a result of his fall.

“I can’t leave you here,” Benedict said. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t do it.”

Martin’s panicked eyes softened and he opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself.

“What?” Benedict asked, suddenly anxious to know what Martin was keeping from him.

“Nothing. I just—what are you going to do with me?”

“If I come back,” Benedict said. “If I come back and you’re one of them…”

“I won’t be. Now go on.”

“No.”

“Benedict, you can’t—”

Benedict leaned down and, after he grabbed Martin’s hands and hoisted him to his feet, he guided him over toward a small patch of grass along the curb. It was not a safe spot by any means, but it was the safest available option and it would have to do.

“Well if you’re going to stay behind, I’d rather _not_ have you wait in the middle of the street if it’s all the same to you. I’ll have a look in one of these houses,” Benedict said. “If it’s empty, we can stay there for the day while your leg heals up a bit, all right? Just—wait here by the bike. Don’t you _dare_ move.”

“Not that I could.” said Martin, still wincing in pain.

For once, it was moderately easier for Benedict ignore the sweet warmth of Martin’s hands in his own. He knew that this was not the time to let his mind fall victim to such distractions, that soon the zombies would sniff out the fresh blood and come shuffling at them from all sides, licking their rotting lips and baring their bloodstained teeth.

He approached the nearest house – the windows were not boarded up and there was still a car in the driveway which made him think that its previous occupants hadn’t taken off at the first sign of the imminent apocalypse. There might have been someone waiting inside who could offer some help.

 _Either that_ , he thought _, or they were infected before they could leave_.

He grabbed a rock from the front yard – a poor choice for a weapon, to be sure, but he hoped that there’d be something more substantial waiting for him inside the house.

Benedict had to stop himself from knocking politely on the front door. He suspected that the days of manners and proper etiquette were now in the past so instead, he tiptoed around the side of the house to make sure that the entire area was free of zombies.

He heard the zombie before he saw it – he’d already learned to anticipate the possibility of that flesh-hungry snarl lurking around every corner. It was hunched over in the grass, feasting on a glistening wet heap of organs that _must_ have been human remains, although thanks to the zombie that was feasting upon them, they were quite unrecognizable as such. Benedict grinned a bit, knowing that he had the advantage. Of course, timing was everything and his aim needed to be impeccable. A sharp crack to the back of the head might not be enough to breach the zombie’s cranium and damage its brain, but it was a risk he had to take. Benedict wound his arm back and thrust the rock at the zombie’s head. With a defeated growl, it twitched and fell forward into the seeping pile of human remains. Benedict approached it with caution – it was too damaged to move properly but it looked as it if it still possessed the capacity to lunge forward and help itself to a sizeable bite of Benedict’s flesh.

Benedict quickly stooped down to retrieve the rock, which had fallen to the right side of the zombie’s convulsing body. It was spattered with blood and what appeared to be a few chunks of zombie brains. He knew there was a time when this would have disgusted him but now his thoughts were firmly fixed on survival – both for his sake and for Martin’s. With the image of Martin’s injured body propped up against the motorcycle burned into his mind, he heaved the rock once more and this time, the zombie slumped to the ground, the rock still firmly lodged within its skull. Benedict paused and waited for the slow shuffle of zombie feet or even another telltale snarl, but he heard nothing of the sort.

He headed toward the back door of the house and was surprised to find that it was slightly ajar. He realized that the bloodied remains in the backyard must have belonged to the homeowner – he’d probably just stepped outside to see if the chaos had died down and ended up staring down the undead. Benedict cherished the pang of sadness that prickled deep within his chest – no matter what the apocalypse brought forth, he never wanted to find himself desensitized to human feeling. He refused to let the end of the world bleed him dry. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to him if he lost his ability to feel sadness, if it meant that he’d stop feeling love as well.

The interior of the small house reminded Benedict of a cottage, with its wide-planked wooden walls and scratched hardwood floors that were in desperate need of sweeping. It was messy and mismatched and charming – poorly maintained but welcoming all the same. Benedict found the bathroom and began flinging open cabinets and drawers. He found the disinfectant first and then he managed to get his hands on a few packages of gauze that were buried deep within the drawer.  Despite his thorough search, he didn’t find much – there was enough to bandage the wound and perhaps redress it later if it began to bleed through, but if Martin’s injury turned out to be worse than he’d originally assumed, Benedict would need to raid another nearby home for more supplies.

He also needed a weapon – he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to survive the zombie apocalypse by chucking rocks. On his way from the bathroom to the living room, he grabbed a long wrought-iron fireplace poker. It was not a proper weapon and it would take several hearty thwacks for it to sufficiently render any zombie immobile, but it was better than braving the apocalypse unarmed. He told himself that he’d search the home more carefully later on, after he’d bandaged Martin’s wounds and boarded up the windows and doors.

He exited through the front door this time.  He hadn’t heard any indication of a struggle so he assumed that Martin was still safe and sound and sure enough, he was. It was difficult for Benedict to watch Martin whimper in pain and disbelief as he stared at the gaping wound on his leg.

“Benedict!” Martin hissed. “You made it! I heard some growling and I thought—I thought—”

“We need to be quick,” Benedict whispered back as he made his way across the street toward Martin. “The house is clear but there are definitely zombies around here. It’s only quiet right now because they probably think they’ve picked everyone off already.”

He reached out his left arm for Martin to take and Martin gripped it with all the strength he could muster.

“Just a little bit further,” Benedict reassured him as he supported the weight of Martin’s body. “We’re almost there.”

He pushed the front door open and led Martin inside.

“Not bad.” said Martin, surveying the interior of the house.

“We’re staying here tonight,” Benedict said. “Give you a chance to rest up a little and some time for us to get our bearings.”

He led Martin into the bedroom.

“Wait here.” Benedict instructed as he helped Martin get comfortable on the bed.

“Where could I possibly go?” Martin said, smiling a little.

Benedict was already in the bathroom gathering up the meager medical supplies and even though he knew that Martin wouldn’t see, he couldn’t help but smile back.

“This _would_ be you during a zombie apocalypse, wouldn’t it?” Martin said as Benedict cleaned Martin’s abrasion (not as deep as he’d originally feared – just very red and raw) and began applying gauze.

“It would?” Benedict asked.

“Benedict Cumberbatch: Zombie Killer. Throwing every bit of yourself into whatever role you’re playing.”

Benedict grinned.

“Not really playing if it’s the real thing, I’m afraid.” Benedict said.

“Still,” Martin said. “I’m—I don’t know what I’d do without you right now, I don’t.”

Benedict sighed and crumpled the empty gauze wrapper in his fist.

“Just rest,” Benedict said. “I’m going to try to find some way to secure the house. Maybe there are some boards in the cellar or something. Yell if you need anything, all right? But—well, don’t yell _too_ loud, but—”

“I understand.” Martin said.

Benedict patted Martin’s hand in spite of himself and headed into the cellar to begin his search for anything he could use to reinforce the windows and doors.

All the while, he thought about Martin.

Much like the end of the world, his misguided little infatuation with Martin began quickly and seemed to stretch on forever. Benedict’s life was split in two: everything that happened before he fell in love with Martin, and everything that happened after. He’d been about as prepared for the apocalypse as he’d been for his one-sided love affair, and he’d been doing a far better job at handling the apocalypse. Somehow, it was easy for him to accept living in a world in which the threat of death-by-zombies hung sharp and pendulous above his head than it was to deal with his seemingly incessant desire for his friend. The end of the world was something everyone shared but his feelings for Martin – well, he’d done what he thought was an admirable job of keeping those to himself. As far as Benedict knew, Martin was oblivious to the parade of obscene thoughts that marched through Benedict’s mind every single time Martin was in his presence.

More than anything, he wanted it to _stop_ , mostly because he was painfully aware that nothing would ever come of his desires. He wanted to be able to look at Martin without falling victim to that hollow, needling tightness in his chest. He needed to be able to coexist with Martin without _craving_ him. And he’d tried in vain to blot out any non-platonic thoughts of Martin, to make his mind go back to how it was before, back when his hands didn’t burn to touch Martin’s skin, back when he wouldn’t have even _considered_ spending long, languid nights in bed with him, let alone _ache_ for them. His awareness of how perfectly wrong it all was did nothing to dampen his desire. His heart refused to listen – it had grown around its need for Martin, welcoming it in and stubbornly refusing to let it go no matter how firmly he demanded for it to do the exact opposite.

 _Think of Martin’s wife,_ Benedict told himself as he rummaged through the cellar. _Think of their children. Think of how, even after all these years, he’s never shown one shred of romantic interest in you. You need to get over this, Benedict. This stupid love affair isn’t doing you one bit of good. It never has and it never will._

He found a few wide slabs of plywood stacked against the basement wall and, after he located a small toolbox, he carried everything upstairs and began the arduous task of hammering the planks of wood across the windows of the house. He kept the fireplace poker close at hand, just in case a zombie came after him but aside from the sound of a few barking dogs and the occasional rustle of wind through the trees, everything was eerily silent.

Exhausted and sweaty and still a bit bloody from the earlier zombie encounter, he reached into his pocket for his lighter and packet of cigarettes and headed back into the house.

“Martin!” Benedict said. He was surprised to find Martin standing in the kitchen, rifling through the refrigerator. “I thought I told you to rest.”

“I—oh,” Martin said, getting an eyeful of the gritty, sun-warmed version of Benedict that stood before him, his smoldering cigarette dangling precariously from between his barely-parted lips. “I know, I just—I wanted to grab something to drink but I didn’t want to bother you.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Benedict shrugged. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

“Yeah, I—yeah.” Martin said, blinking rapidly. “You’re good. _I’m_ good, I meant. I’m—I’m good.”

Benedict had never seen Martin look so bewildered before and if he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that Martin was— _attracted_ to him. Benedict did his absolute damndest to purge the thought from his mind – he didn’t want to think it, he didn’t want to look like he was thinking it, and he most certainly didn’t want to _like_ that no matter how hard he tried, he _couldn’t stop thinking it_.

 _Besides_ , Benedict thought as he exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke and secretly reveled in Martin’s glassy-eyed gaze, _there’s no way he’d find me attractive right now. I look like I just finished hammering plywood over the windows of the house. I’m sweaty and dirty and disgusting and there’s still zombie blood all over my shirt._

But, try as he might, Benedict couldn’t shake the image of the look in Martin’s eyes, that lustful appraisal of the man that stood before him. He knew that look all too well – he knew he’d given that very look _and_ he knew that Martin himself had been its sole recipient. Benedict was unsure how to respond to it. He knew how he _wanted_ to respond – it involved not giving a damn that he was covered in sweat and dirt and blood or that Martin’s leg was injured. It involved taking Martin right there against the kitchen counter, making him scream loud enough to wake the – _living_ – dead. It involved Martin’s lips, hungry for something they’d only just realized they wanted, positively sated by Benedict’s eager, needy bestowment of pent-up kisses. It involved moaning Martin’s name again and again, exorcising all that desire he’d been hiding, blocked and boarded up like the exterior of the house.

He stubbed out his cigarette on the glass-covered coffee table and shook his head.

“What?” Martin said quickly.

“Nothing,” Benedict said. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. We’ll still stay here tonight, just in case. Besides, I’ve already boarded everything up and from the look of it, there’s enough food to hold us over for tonight and tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good to me.” Martin said.

They spent the late afternoon and early evening preparing dinner in the safety of their newly-secured residence. Benedict tried to keep his mind on survival – _eat dinner. Possibly break into one of the houses next door and search for proper weapons. Rest up. Check Martin’s wound. Redress it if necessary. Don’t think about his hands in your hair. Don’t think about what it would sound like for him to moan your name in the heat of passion. Don’t think about him sucking on your lower lip and whatever you do, don’t you fucking think about the way he was looking at you when you walked in the front door._

“We haven’t been burning them.” Benedict said as he attempted to chop some vegetables for the stir-fry he was making.

“What?” Martin asked.

“I think we’re supposed to burn the bodies to keep the virus from spreading,” Benedict said. “which we haven’t been doing. We’ve got to start. We’re going to need some sort of lighter fluid and matches. And I’m probably going to have to give up the motorcycle.

“How do you plan on getting around?”

“There’s a car in the driveway. I’m sure its owner wouldn’t mind if we, er, commandeered it for our own purposes.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because I found a zombie feasting on his entrails earlier today.” Benedict said.

“And there goes my appetite.” Martin said, grimacing.

“Going to have to get used to it,” Benedict said, tossing the crudely chopped vegetables into a pan. “This is how things are going to be from here on in, or at least for the foreseeable future.”

“I tried calling again,” Martin said quietly. “Still no answer. Home phone or mobile.”

Benedict’s heart sank a bit. He felt so silly for allowing himself to be so consumed by infatuation that he forgot what was really important – Martin’s family and the zombie-infested world that stood between them.

“I’m sure they’re all right,” Benedict said. “I’m sure the phone lines will be repaired and we’ll be able to get to an airport and hop on a plane or _something_ —you’ll get home to them, Martin. I promise.”

“And if I don’t?”

 _Then you’re stuck with me_ , Benedict thought. _Stuck with me and I have nothing to offer you. I can keep on trying, though. I can patch up all your wounds and cook dinner for you and love you like I’ve never loved anybody else but—I’m never going to be your family. I’m never going to mean as much to you as you mean to me._

“Don’t think like that,” Benedict said, his voice nearly drowned out by the sizzle of simmering vegetables. “You’ll see them. All the zombies in the world couldn’t stand between you and Amanda and the kids.”

Martin sighed.

“I hope you’re right,” he said, opening a cabinet in the kitchen. “I’ll just—set the table, I guess. There must be—oh, look!” he said, reaching for a pricy bottle of champagne. “Look at _this_! We’ve got to have some of this tonight, Benedict.”

“Can’t,” said Benedict. “We have to have our wits about us. What if a zombie comes bursting through that door and we’re too drunk to fight it off?”

“One glass won’t hurt you.” Martin said.

And Martin was right. One glass (served with what was quite possibly the best stir-fry either man had ever eaten) didn’t hurt Benedict. The second glass (sipped slowly from the comfort of an armchair in the living room) didn’t hurt him either – he started laughing a little louder and his cheeks were a little more flushed than usual, but he still felt capable of holding his own against the undead. The third glass – generously poured by Martin and accompanied by a mock-innocent _“Oh dear, was that quite a lot of champagne? I hadn’t noticed”_ expression – that glass was Benedict’s undoing. He’d teetered over the brink of tipsy somewhere between two and three and now he was pleasantly intoxicated, slurring his words and gesticulating wildly and looking at Martin with inadvisably unabashed fondness that never would have seen the light of day had it not been for the champagne.

For the first time, he _wasn’t_ trying to ignore Martin. He was practically reveling in everything he found so attractive about him. Right now it was the look of blissful comfort on his face, the slight pink flush on his cheeks and the slow twirl of the champagne glass stem between his fingertips. He was obscenely endearing and it didn’t take much for Benedict’s mind to turn it all into filth. In reality he was sitting across from his friend, sharing a drink on a pleasantly zombie-less evening but in his mind—oh in his mind he was setting down his champagne glass and striding over toward Martin, wrapping his legs around him and bringing him in for a kiss that would start off slow and build until Martin moaned into his Benedict’s mouth and pressed his hips toward him, fingernails digging into Benedict’s neck.

Benedict took another large sip of champagne.

“Benedict,” Martin said. “Did you ever think it would end up like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like _this._ The end of the world, fucking everything we know about humanity has been turned on its bloody head and we’re in here, drinking champagne like it’s a normal night.”

“Maybe this is normal now,” Benedict said. “I mean, everything’s different. Are there still going to be films made? Are we still actors? Did any of it mean anything?”

“Getting a little deep tonight, aren’t we?” Martin said, taking another carefully considered sip of champagne.

Benedict shrugged. He didn’t take any pleasure in thinking that everything he’d ever done up until now had served absolutely no purpose but, unlike some of his other less-than-savory thoughts, he didn’t want to act as if this had never crossed his mind.

“Do you have any regrets?” Benedict asked, polishing off the last of his champagne.

“About what?”

“About anything. About your life before—before all of this happened. Jobs you wished you’d accepted. Jobs you wished you _hadn’t_ accepted. Places you wished you’d gone, things like that.”

Benedict watched Martin think about this for a moment and Benedict considered his own regrets – his lack of a relationship, his lack of children, the things that he knew he’d never get to do now that the world was over.

“I regret not being with them when it happened,” Martin said softly. “I regret that I came out here for some silly premiere even though everyone told me not to and I—Amanda and I, we got into a fight. Right before I flew out. I said something careless and she snapped and Ben, I’ve never _seen_ her so angry with me. And she said—she said that taking a break wouldn’t be the worst thing. I never thought I’d hear that from her, you know? But I was angry. And I told her maybe she was right, maybe we did need a break. And that’s the last thing I said to her. I was just so bloody _angry_.  And now she’s not answering her phone or—or she _can’t_ answer her phone and—fucking—I can’t fucking think about it right now, I’m sorry.”

Benedict had never seen such pain in Martin’s eyes before, not since the night of the uprising. He wanted to rid Martin of the pain but he had no idea how. His thoughts about Martin always felt wrong but they felt _especially_ wrong now, in light of Martin’s recently exposed vulnerability. His mind told him to be quiet and stoic but supportive. His heart – and other parts of him – still wanted to lean over toward Martin and kiss all that heartache right out of him, make him whimper against the warm, passionate pressure of his lips and whisper _yes, that’s it don’t stop don’t ever stop don’t you dare stop God yes Benedict I’ve been wanting this too_ —

But now was not the time. _There will never be a time,_ Benedict thought. _He and I could be the last two men on earth and he still wouldn’t fucking want me. Not even out of desperation. Or pity. Or anything. I’m going to love him for the rest of my life and he’s never going to know it, much less love me back._

“I understand,” Benedict said. “I hate thinking that this is it, you know?”

“I know.”

Benedict thought of his other regret, the one he’d never mention to Martin. He wished he’d never fallen in love with Martin in the first place. The evening would be so much more enjoyable if not for his feelings threatening to spill over with each additional sip of champagne that passed his lips. He wanted Martin. He didn’t know how to make himself stop wanting him, even when Martin was sitting there in front of him, absolutely heartbroken because of his separation from his family. But Martin’s sadness didn’t stop him from being gorgeous, didn’t stop Benedict’s heart from lurching every time Martin licked his lips or idly ran his fingers through his own hair or let his hand brush against Benedict’s each time he handed him a newly refilled glass of champagne. _God_ , he fucking wanted Martin, even though that wanting Martin was even more wrong than before.

“I should probably get some rest.” Martin said.

“So should I.” said Benedict, putting his empty glass of champagne on the table and settling into the armchair.

Martin looked at him for a moment.

“What?” Benedict asked.

“Come on.”

“What?”

“Do you always go for the least comfortable place to sleep? Is it like some sort of challenge for you or something? ‘Oh, let me see how uncomfortable I can possibly be while I’m sleeping. Let’s see, where can I sleep that will make me all sore and irritable when I wake up in the morning’.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You slept on the floor at the hotel, you’re squeezing yourself into that armchair like your life depends on it—just—we _can_ share, you know.”

“Share?”

“You don’t have to sleep out here in that armchair.”

Benedict looked at Martin quizzically, hoping that his rampant lust and the champagne weren’t contributing to some unwitting misunderstanding of Martin’s words.

“ _I don’t mind sharing a bed with you_.” Martin said flatly, as if he were explaining something to a small child.

“You—well—all right then, I just—if you don’t think you need your space I—wouldn’t—mind I guess?”

Martin nodded and set his glass down as well.

“So it’s settled.”

Benedict couldn’t escape the odd feeling that, in Martin’s mind, something _else_ had been settled, although Benedict could not be sure. All he knew was that Martin was extending an invitation that Benedict could scarcely bring himself to reject.

He followed Martin into the bedroom, wondering if Martin could sense the pounding in his heart, wondering if Martin was feeling anything other than exhausted.

“Your leg’s all right?” Benedict asked as they slipped beneath the duvet.

“Sore and kind of itchy right now, but I think I’ll make it.”

Benedict smiled as he nuzzled his face against the pillow. Any form of relaxation felt so much more deserved these days – even when he’d been running himself ragged from work, resting always felt wrong. Now, more than ever, his nerves were always on edge and he welcomed any opportunity to be rid of them. It didn’t help the matter any when Martin took up the other side of the bed and curled up beneath the duvet. He groaned a little as he stretched and attempted to make himself comfortable. It was a soft and peaceful moment, a beautifully welcome contrast to the hellish zombie nightmare that crept closer and closer, waiting to strike.


	3. Chapter 3

_Over the years, Benedict had picked up little bits of information about Martin – he knew how Martin liked to take his tea and how Martin’s ideal weekend would be spent thumbing through boxes of albums at some musty little hole-in-the-wall record shop. He knew – and happened to adore – the way Martin’s eyes glowed when he heard a favorite song. He knew that Martin’s hands always found a way to touch his own face when he talked and his tongue had the same affinity for his lips._

_But now Martin’s legs were wrapped tight around Benedict’s hips and Benedict was learning all sorts of new things – learning that Martin’s kisses tasted like the champagne they’d shared that evening, only warmer and wetter and sweeter and Benedict’s tongue couldn’t get enough. He wanted to focus on them but it was a difficult task when Martin was on top of him, naked and breathless and damp with sweat. Benedict was learning that just the sound of Martin’s moans would have been enough to undo him. And Benedict was learning that he fucking adored it when Martin twisted his hair between his fingers while his kisses traveled downward, evolving into little bites around Benedict’s neck and collarbone._

_“You like that, don’t you?” Martin whispered. “Wanted this forever, yeah?”_

_Benedict nodded. He wanted this. He wanted everything. He wanted so much more than just teasing little nibbles – he wanted Martin to bite greedily at his skin, he wanted his hair in Martin’s fists, to watch the maddeningly lustful look in Martin’s eyes as he—_

_“Fucking—yes. Don’t stop, Martin. Don’t you dare stop.”_

_“Wasn’t planning on it.”_

_—it was happening, everything he wanted was happening exactly as he’d always hoped. Benedict cried out Martin’s name, louder and louder. He didn’t think about the repercussions of his excessive volume, about the threat lurking right outside their door. Benedict’s entire world was Martin’s skin. His hands were splayed across Martin’s back. He groaned into Martin’s neck and—_

_“Benedict! Benedict! Come on! Seriously! Bloody fucking Christ, Benedict! What on earth is going to take to get you to—”_

_“—Martin?” Benedict breathed. Martin’s impatience seemed unfounded. “I’m almost—”_

“ _—_ Benedict! Fuck, Benedict! Wake up!”

“What?”

Benedict opened his eyes and he was in bed with Martin, but _not_ the way he’d just been in bed with Martin. There were no low moans or lips that tasted of champagne and Martin was wearing his clothes and he was staring at Benedict with exasperation, not lust, and _—_

_—please don’t tell me I was talking in my sleep, please don’t let me be—oh for fuck’s sake I am and he’s probably noticed, he must have noticed and this is definitely the last time he and I are sharing a bed and—_

“Benedict,” said Martin slowly. “I heard something. In the cellar. Definitely—definitely zombies.”

“You know for sure?” Benedict said, rubbing his eyes with one hand and discreetly attempting to rearrange the blanket with the other. “I don’t hear anything.”

“I swear I heard something. And I’d never heard a sound like that before the uprising.”

“Zombies.” Benedict said. “Wait—zombies? Plural?”

“I think so.”

“Damn it. Give me a minute.”

“R-right. Okay. Whatever you—yeah.”

Benedict stared at Martin for a moment, attempting to assess what Martin knew and what he didn’t. He wanted to believe that Martin hadn’t heard or seen a thing, that his dream would be safe within the confines of his subconscious. That is, unless Benedict ended up exquisitely intoxicated some night and chose to regale Martin with the story of that one time they were sleeping next to each other and Benedict’s mind took it upon itself to conjure up a sexual encounter starring none other than Martin himself. But Benedict could see nothing but exhaustion in Martin’s eyes which, as far as he was concerned, served as a convincing argument in favor of Martin’s blissful ignorance. __

“I wish I had a better weapon.” Benedict grumbled as he slid out of bed.

“Sorry?”

“I just have this thing,” Benedict said, reaching underneath the bed and producing the fireplace poker. “It’s respectable but it’s not—you know.”

“Oh.” Martin said quickly. “Right, well—”

“In the meantime,” Benedict said. “How about you gather our things together and go through the cupboards in the kitchen and stock up on food. Also, if you can, try to find the keys to that car. We’re probably going to need it to escape. I have a feeling there are going to be more zombies now and the motorcycle won’t be safe. I’ll—probably have to leave it behind.”

Martin nodded.

“Is your leg all right?” Benedict asked.

“Don’t know,” Martin said. He pulled back the blanket and examined it. “It feels all right – really bruised though. But I’ll make it.  I’ll make sure to take the extra gauze and disinfectant with me just in case, don’t worry. And don’t get killed down there, all right?” he called as Benedict headed out of the bedroom.

Benedict opened the cellar door and started down the stairs. It was quiet, but that didn’t mean Martin’s claim was wrong. It was too dark to see anything and he clung to the railing for guidance, keeping the fireplace poker at arm’s length.

As Benedict’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed a pale blue shaft of light streaming through a broken window in the far corner of the cellar. He cursed himself for the oversight – he hadn’t stopped to consider the low, narrow windows along the foundation of the house and he’d only boarded up the large ones. Before he could get too involved in disparaging himself for being so careless, he heard the unmistakable throaty growl that could only belong to the undead. He continued taking slow, deliberate steps. Any thoughts of the dream he’d been having were now relegated to the darkest recesses of his mind – now, his sole task was to vanquish his undead enemy.  The problem was, he couldn’t _see_ his enemy. There was that spot of light glowing in the cracked window but it barely illuminated the immediate space surrounding it, let alone the entire cellar.

Before he could collect himself and formulate a plan, he felt the tight, cold grasp of a zombie hand clutching his arm. Benedict stumbled backward and thudded into the railing, just barely maintaining his balance. He could see little more than a faint, abstract hint of the zombie before him– its pale, decaying skin was only just visible in the darkness. He shook the zombie’s arm away and swung blindly, hoping that he’d do enough damage to the zombie’s skull to buy himself some time. He felt poker strike the zombie’s shoulder and heard the zombie groan with – not _pain_ , but increased aggression – and it lunged again. This time, its hands were clenching Benedict’s neck, its filthy fingernails embedding themselves in his skin. The air was thick with the stench of decaying flesh and Benedict nearly gagged at the scent. The zombie was so close now, its teeth bared in preparation, ready to bite.

Benedict held his breath and jammed the sharpest end of the poker right through the zombie’s temple. He felt the zombie’s grasp tighten and release as it wailed and staggered. He withdrew the poker and slammed it in once more, penetrating deeper into the zombie’s skull. This time, he knew he’d pierced the brain and he winced as the zombie’s body slid to the floor. The embedded poker lolled back and forth as the zombie’s skull smacked against the cellar steps.

As Benedict backed away from the pool of zombie blood seeping onto the concrete floor, his hand brushed against something smooth and wooden and lacquered. It felt thick and sturdy and when he wrapped his fingers around it, he knew exactly what it was—the handle of an axe.

The discovery of such a useful weapon could not have been more opportune – a second zombie was slowly approaching, its arms reaching out in his direction. He gritted his teeth and took an uncertain swing at the zombie before him – the axe struck the zombie’s shoulder. He severed the arm, leaving it bloody and limp and dangling by the barest shred of skin. The zombie was not deterred by the near-amputation and trudged forward, evidently incensed by the heated battle. It stretched its intact arm and Benedict raised the axe again, slowly but with purpose. This time, it wedged itself right in the zombie’s skull and Benedict wiggled the axe as he tried to pull it free.

 “Benedict!” Martin shouted. “Benedict you need to get up here now!”

Benedict bounded up the stairs, nearly slipping on the blood-smeared steps. He left a trail of crimson footprints behind him as he met Martin in the living room.

“What is it?”

“There are more,” Martin said. “A lot more. Outside.”

Benedict leaned against the living room wall and closed his eyes as he listened to the undead groan and shuffle outside the house. His limbs were still trembling from his battle against the two zombies in the cellar.

“I see you found the zombie in the cellar.” Martin said, eyeing Benedict’s bloodied clothes.

“Zombies. You were right – there were two of them down there. And,” Benedict said with a playful swing of the axe. “I found this too.”

“That—wow.” Martin said. “Watch where you’re swinging it but, bloody hell, you wanted a proper weapon, there you go.”

Benedict would have been happy to linger on that moment just a little longer but his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of zombie hands pounding against the boarded-up windows.

“We’re not going to be able to stay, are we?” Martin asked.

“We were never going to be able to stay,” Benedict said. “But right now, we have to worry about getting out. I figure we have about ten minutes before the house is completely surrounded, judging by the noise outside.”

“How, though? The street is crawling with them. We’re probably the only living humans left and they’re going to sniff us out just like you said and this is—Benedict, we’re fucking trapped, aren’t we?”

“No, we’re not trapped. But we will be if we stick around much longer. As far as we know, only those first two zombies were aware of our presence. The rest of them are still skulking around out there but they’ll smell us soon enough, or hear us,” he added, lowering his voice. “And on top of all that, the house isn’t secure anymore. So—this is what we’re going to do.  You gathered the food and supplies like I asked, right?”

“Right here.” Martin said, holding up Benedict’s backpack.

“We should have done that last night but _someone_ thought it would be a good idea to get me drunk and—”

“Sorry, mate.” Martin said sheepishly.

“It’s fine. It was—nice, actually.” He wondered how he’d gone several whole minutes without thinking of how terribly in love he was. So much of his time was spent trying to forget but when he actually managed to push Martin from his mind, it never felt right. It made him think about what it would be like to finally get over Martin, to live his life without the need for him weighing heavy in his heart. He knew it would happen eventually – sooner or later, his untended desire would wither and die and Martin would go back to being just a friend or (and this is what he feared more than anything), Martin would be nothing but a memory.

“Yeah, I gathered as much.” Martin said quickly, and once again Benedict hoped to high heaven that he hadn’t been talking in his sleep. __

“Anyway,” Benedict said. “Did you find those car keys?”

“Yup,” said Martin, reaching into his pocket and handing the keys to Benedict.

“Good. Very good. We’ll leave out the back door, get in the car, and keep on driving. We’ll head for the country. Fewer people, fewer zombies. And we’ll just keep heading east until—until we can’t head east anymore. Are you with me?”

“Sort of have to be, don’t I?” Martin said.

“What?”

“Where else am I going to go?” Martin said. “What else could I possibly do other than follow you?”

They were the sort of words that Benedict would rather have heard in a fit of passion as opposed to a brewing bout of rage but he couldn’t force his ears to hear them differently. Martin’s anger was damn near palpable at this point, taking physical form in Martin’s twitching temple and clenched fists.

Benedict and Martin gathered up the last of their belongings. There was something about the house that felt like _theirs_ now and he was actually sad to leave it behind. But they’d had their night of champagne and confessions and he couldn’t let himself forget that, after all, this was the zombie apocalypse and sweet, good-natured sentiment was not going to crack open the skulls of the undead. The house was not their own – even the world was not their own anymore.

“Ready?” Benedict asked, just as he had when they’d left the hotel, the first and only time they’d ventured into the zombie-infested streets of Los Angeles.

“Ready.”

They stepped outside, and Martin shuddered at the human remains littering the backyard, as well as the dead zombie carcass that lay next to them.

“Yeah,” Benedict said. “That was yesterday.”

“Fucking hell.”

They’d barely made it from the back steps to the lawn when the first zombie rounded the corner of the house.

This one seemed different than the others, as if it had been recently infected and still possessed some vaguely human qualities. Its mouth and cheeks were streaked in blood but its skin was not visibly decaying and for an instant, Benedict swore that there was something un-zombielike in the devilish creature that would soon attempt to kill him.

Martin had been right about him – life had cast him as Benedict Cumberbatch: Zombie Killer and he’d willingly accepted the part. It was needed of him, and it was what Martin needed of him, and he threw himself into the role with his entire heart. But right now, he could feel himself beginning to break character – the _real_ Benedict Cumberbatch was emerging. This zombie had once been like him – maybe at one point it had possessed some desire to resist and stay alive, braving the undead world. Maybe it had a family, hopes, dreams, desires, needs, and regrets but the virus had stolen all of that, replacing it with violent, destructive hunger.

He thought about what would happen if he became infected. One bite was all that stood between Benedict Cumberbatch: Zombie Killer and Benedict Cumberbatch: Zombie. The same could be said for Martin – if he couldn’t protect him, if the swing of his axe failed and Martin came to know the feeling of rotting zombie teeth breaking his skin, what then? It was easy – oddly easy – to brandish his trusty weapon _du jour_ and do what needed to be done but if the zombie in question was Martin, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to finish the job. He imagined Martin, scared and defenseless, attempting to steel himself in preparation for an incoming zombie attack – and failing. There’d be some time, although Benedict wasn’t sure how much, during which Martin would be bitten, but whole. Conscious of his fate, but powerless to change it. They’d look each other in the eye and know what needed to be done. And Benedict knew there was no way he could do it.

“Benedict,” Martin whispered. “Are you going to kill it or not?”

“I—yes,” Benedict said, shaking his head in an attempt to regroup. “Of course.”

He took a few purposeful steps toward the zombie. He did not want to kill. He wished there were a way to save the zombie, to cure the virus and rid the poor being of its curse.

“Stay back!” Benedict said.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Martin said, working his way back up the stairs, gripping the railing like his life depended on it.

Benedict charged forward and swung. The axe made impact with the zombie’s skull but the zombie did not die – he’d breached the skull but hadn’t damaged the zombie’s brain. He pulled the axe back and took a few steps backward, giving himself some space for a proper swing. This time, he missed completely and the axe made an airy _swoosh_ as it hit nothing.

“I thought you were supposed to be good at this!” Martin said. His tone was amiable enough but Benedict still felt a little put out, realizing that he’d been hoping that his zombie-killing would make Martin look at him the way he had the day before.

“I am!” Benedict grunted. This time, he took a well-aimed swing and split the zombie’s skull in two.

Benedict turned to face Martin and there it was – the _look_. That dazed _desire._ Any uncertainty Benedict had harbored about that particular _look_ had absolutely evaporated. Martin’s face was a breaking dam; it signified acceptance that _nothing_ ( _no I definitely don’t feel this way about him he’s my co-star, he’s my friend, I’m in a committed relationship and I have children and I’m not—I’ve never been—but he’s—_ ) was _something_ ( _I want him right here right now even if he’s soaked in the blood of a thousand zombies I want him I want him I want him I want him I want him_ ). It was a look that heralded the long-awaited shrugging off of denial and the tender embracement of the truth. It was raw and honest, bold and naked. It was admission without words and it made Benedict want to slay every zombie in the entire world to see just how loud Martin’s silence could speak.

Every zombie in the world was not after him, but there were several more blazing a deadly trail across the yard. He counted five at first but there were six. And he wanted to take on every single one of them.

“Benedict, we should go.” Martin said.

“I can—I can do this.” Benedict said, raising his axe.

“S-six of them?” Martin said, holding back a laugh. “Now you’re just—you’re—no. Not six of them. ”

His blood burned through his veins and he tightened his grip on the axe.

“Just stay back.” Benedict said.

“Ben—no!”

Benedict stepped forward, attempting to formulate a plan with each step. He’d never taken on six before and the idea was equal parts tempting and foolish. He was high on a dangerous mixture of adrenaline and the look in Martin’s eyes.

Instead of bringing the axe down above the first zombie’s head, he swung sideways. With remarkably little effort he severed its head completely. He knew he’d have to go back and crush the zombie’s skull but incapacitating the first zombie gave him slightly more of an advantage than he had a moment earlier. The second and third zombies inched closer. With two bold and well-timed swings, he decapitated each of them.

The remaining zombies were quick, but not quick enough. They lunged and Benedict’s axe sliced through the air and then through the necks of the zombies before him. The backyard was a nauseating collage of blood and sinew and splintered bits of bone. He pursed his lips together and raised the axe above his head, preparing to crush through the first zombie’s skull. He was breathless and his arms were trembling but he knew that unless the brains were destroyed, his task wouldn’t be complete.

“Benedict!” Martin called from across the yard. “I think you’ve taken care of them, mate.”

“You have to destroy the brain!” Benedict called back. He wasn’t worried about the sound of their voices waking the undead – they were already on the move and ready to attack and he knew that he and Martin would be leaving soon. Besides, he couldn’t kill them all. He was but one man with an axe and although nothing would give him greater pleasure than to impress Martin, there was a fine line between daring and careless.

Benedict’s axe _whooshed_ through the air until the six zombie skulls were reduced to innumerable scraps of once-human remains.

“Did you grab the matches and lighter fluid like I asked?” Benedict asked.

“Ah—fuck! I didn’t! I forgot!”

Benedict sighed at the heap of gore at his feet. He didn’t want to leave the job unfinished, but he wasn’t sure if the necessity of burning the remains was worth the risk of sticking around.

“Forget it.” Benedict said.

“Bloody fucking _hell_ , Benedict.” Martin said, completely breathless as Benedict approached him. Benedict beamed. He didn’t care if Martin knew. He didn’t care what he’d said in his sleep, if Martin had heard it and ignored it or had been clinging to the words all morning. He’d taken down six zombies at once and Martin looked like he’d just had the best fuck of his life. __

“Let’s go!” Benedict yelled. They dashed across the yard and headed toward the car. Martin lunged for the nearest door.

“No!” Benedict said. “Other side!”

“Right!”

“Hurry up!”

Martin opened the other door and slid inside the car as Benedict placed the dirty axe in the backseat.

“I’m going as fast I can!” Martin cried.

Benedict slammed the car door shut just as the nearest zombie pressed its filthy hands against the window. He backed out of the driveway and started speeding down the road, mowing down zombies along the way. The tires lurched and heaved as they plowed over the zombie bodies in the street.

“Lots of traffic this morning.” Martin said, and Benedict grinned. The hard part was over. The zombies were numerous but they were slow and no longer posed much of a threat.

“I wonder if the radio still works.” Benedict said once the road was clear of zombies. He reached for the dial.

They listened to the last minute of some song that Martin knew and Benedict vaguely recognized.  He didn’t pay much attention to it anyway; music didn’t seem to fit in this world. It felt like receiving a belated birthday card from a forgetful friend – something well-intentioned that only called attention to its own irrelevance.

The song faded out and was replaced by some crackling and a series of atonal beeps, followed by a low voice that sounded a little too much like an old audio recording from the 1950s:

_“You are listening to an urgent message from the CDC: the current epidemic has been upgraded to Class Four. This is now an international epidemic. We advise all citizens to remain within their homes.  We repeat: do not attempt to leave your home. If you have been bitten or attacked by an infected person or persons, we regret to inform you that there is no cure at this time. This has been an urgent message from the CDC. This is a recording.”_

There were a few more beeps, some more static, and another song began.

“So it’s not _real_ radio.” Martin said. His voice was slightly lower than it had been before, and it was clear that the word _international_ hadn’t slipped by unnoticed.

“Just on a loop, I guess.”

Martin settled back into his seat, his hands idly stroking his own face in that maddening way that was still capable of distracting Benedict from anything, even the end of the world.

“This is real.” Martin said quietly.

“Hm?”

“This is _real_. And we’ve been lucky. So many people, Ben. There are so many people who didn’t know, who thought it wouldn’t happen. I mean, who thinks that fucking _zombies_ are going to—it’s fucking madness. Look, I’m—I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier this morning,” Martin said tentatively. “You know I didn’t mean it, right?”

“I know,” Benedict said. “I’m not going to act like I don’t know why you were tense and everything.”

“Yeah?” Martin said.

“You miss your family. You’re worried you’re never going to see them again.”

“Mmm,” Martin said. “That’s—definitely part of it, yeah.”

They drove in silence, and Benedict took in the post-apocalyptic landscape. They were heading toward the desert now – so unlike anything that reminded him of home.  It still didn’t feel real. None of it did. The reality of the situation might have dawned on Martin, the permanence attached to the phrase Class Four, but Benedict hadn’t found it yet. There’d been no time for adjustment from one world to the next. There weren’t zombies, and then there were zombies. There was a lack of Martin in his life and then there was nothing _but_ Martin. Martin in his hotel room, Martin in his bed, Martin in his dreams, Martin sitting next to him in the car, licking his lips and leaning his head against the window, staring out at nothing and thinking about—well, Benedict couldn’t be sure what Martin was thinking.

Benedict wasn’t even sure of his own thoughts at the moment.

And when he was sure, he realized that he absolutely did not want to be.

In all the time they’d spent together before the zombie apocalypse, Martin had never looked at him that way. He might have liked Benedict Cumberbatch: Zombie Killer and the sheen of sweat on his skin and the way his arms flexed when he swung the axe but when all of that was stripped away and he was back to being the same Benedict he’d always been, the look was gone. Benedict was certain that Martin’s love – if it even _was_ love – was something born of desperation. That look in Martin’s eyes – it wasn’t a realization at all. It was about the fear of being alone. It was about settling. And judging by the growing darkness in Benedict’s heart, it hurt more than not being loved at all.

“Tank's running low, unfortunately,” Benedict said. His voice sounded colder than he’d intended and it seemed to take Martin aback. “We’ll either need to refuel within the next few hours, or we’ll need to steal another car.”

“Steal another—yeah,” Martin said softly. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Benedict said. “Never been better.”

He knew his brisk manner was confusing Martin, maybe even hurting him, but he didn’t care. For the second time that day, he didn’t want to kill another zombie – not because the shadow of humanity about them filled his heart with pity, but because he couldn’t bear to see that look in Martin’s eyes again, that needy silence that said everything.


	4. Chapter 4

The highway was the very portrait of destruction. Car doors hung perpendicular to their respective vehicles, giving testimony to the last-ditch escape attempts of their occupants. The entire blood-speckled, severed-limb _dear God no please don’t let me die like this please_ scene stretched on for so long that after a while, they no longer shuddered at the sight of it. In some cases, it was difficult to determine whether they were proper corpses or simply zombies that had not yet risen, but despite their growing passivity toward the chaos, neither Benedict nor Martin felt particularly compelled to stop and investigate.

Three cigarettes later (he’d promised himself that he’d cut down but he was beginning to find that _damn it all_ he enjoyed them so much more now that supplies were limited), they were crossing into Nevada and Benedict was still feeling out of sorts. He was weary from thinking and, most of all, weak from _fighting_ – his muscled still twitched and his arms still ached from the morning’s zombie battle. He drove on, unsure of where exactly he was going. All he knew was that he and Martin were heading east, avoiding densely populated areas while still trying to keep an eye out for somewhere they could eventually take shelter.

“Ben,” Martin said. He pressed his hand to Benedict’s arm, but quickly withdrew it. Ever the passenger, it was something he probably used to do with Amanda, some burned-in vestige of life before. “Look.”

“There’s—nothing.” Benedict said, and his moderate wave of panic ebbed slightly. Of course, the new definition of the word ‘nothing’ now encompassed _the blood-drenched remains of humanity_ and he was disturbed by his own cavalier dismissal of the wreckage.

“That’s what I mean,” Martin said. “Fuck, isn’t there _anywhere_ the zombies didn’t hit?”

“You heard the radio. Class Four. I don’t know if there’s a Class Five but if Class Four is internat—if it’s, you know, widespread—”

“You don’t have to be like that. You know we’re both thinking it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying not to.” Benedict said, trying so hard not to seethe. It was the worst possible time for him to get angry but something in him staunchly refused to calm down. The anger felt good – righteous, even – and the longer it lingered the less willing he was to let it go.

“Well _I am_ , okay?” Martin said. His voice sounded just a touch too broken for Benedict to handle. He could face six zombies at once but the faint break in Martin’s voice was something else entirely. “I want to think about my family because right now all I have are thoughts and I’m _worried_ about them. My mobile’s dead. Phone lines are fucking useless. I’m guessing email and the internet aren’t things that work anymore. I’m starting to think air travel is out of the question, unless they’re letting the undead fly aeroplanes now. Unlikely. And if any of this bloody stuff _does_ start working again it’s probably going to be weeks, _months even_ , before—”

“I wish we knew more,” Benedict said. “‘Oh hello, this is the Center for Disease Control. You’re all fucked. This is a recording.’”

His imitation was dead-on and it made him feel good to make Martin laugh a little. He knew impersonating that icy robotic voice wasn’t going to make Martin forget about his family but he felt like making Martin smile was every bit as important as hacking through every zombie that crossed their path.

“They’re probably so scared, Ben,” Martin said quietly, and Benedict didn’t have to look at Martin to know that his smile was gone. “That’s my _family_. My _kids_.”

“Stop.” Benedict whispered.

“And I’m not there for them,” Martin continued. “I’m not there for them and—they’re—they’re everything to m—”

“ _Stop_.”

An axe to the head wouldn’t have hurt as much as the glaring reminder of what he’d never have. The old version of the world hadn’t been kind to his aspirations of fatherhood but the new version of the world seemed to delight in tearing his hopes to shreds. He did not envy Martin’s heartache, not for an instant, but watching Martin in pain gave him a surge of loneliness and reminded him of the absences in his own life and his dreams that would now be even harder, if not impossible, to fulfill.

“Who thinks a zombie apocalypse is actually going to happen?” Martin said quietly. “If you told me this was how the world was going to end I would have laughed in your face.”

“It hasn’t _really_ ended though. We’re still here. Somehow.”

“It’s over for me,” Martin said. “We’re just stragglers that are sticking around long after we ought to have given up hope.”

“It’s been—it’s been _five days,_ Martin. And you’re thinking about _giving up_?”

Benedict couldn’t pretend as if the thought of giving up hadn’t crossed his mind. He was surprised at the sheer interminability of the so-called _end_. It should have felt like nothing, like a blip on the radar followed by endless silence. But the end of the world just kept stretching on and on. At first, he’d braced himself for some big finale, some explosion or earthquake, _anything_ that signified that _yes, this was it everyone. Good show, humanity._ Then, he’d accepted the harsh truth of the situation: it wasn’t just the end of the world –it was the beginning of a new one. One in which he’d constantly need to have his axe close at hand, prepared to strike. He winced at the thought. Just the thought of another battle made his bones ache. He was in good shape but while Bikram yoga might have served him well when preparing to play Sherlock Holmes, there was no yoga method tailored to zombie fighting and his limbs were not accustomed to this sort of exertion.

The slow-building wave of exhaustion broke and hit him all at once, as if merely thinking about it had somehow willed it to consume him. He pulled over and stopped the car.

“I’m so tired, Martin,” he said. “Can we rest for a little while?”

“What, here?” Martin asked. “By a—Benedict, are you serious, that’s a _cemetery_ next to us. Shall I tell the zombies to put the tea on for us or should you?”

“I don’t think they crawl out of graves,” Benedict said as he propped his elbows up on the edge of the steering wheel and pressed his fingers to his temples. “Think about it. Zombies aren’t any stronger than humans – they’re, well, infected undead shadows of the people they once were. No average human could punch his way through a proper casket and crawl out of the earth. It can’t be done. Besides, look at the state of that cemetery. There’s no freshly-turned earth. It’s just—flat. I think we’re safe for now.”

“How do you—never mind. It’s—it’s really good I have you around, I think. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Oh, don’t start that again. I’m sure you’d do just fine without me.” Benedict muttered, opening the car door and stepping out into the midday heat.

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Martin asked, following suit. Although Benedict would never had admitted it right then, it pleased him that Martin closed the car door gently and quietly. He was learning that zombies were drawn to loud noises, and he was trying not to attract their attention.

“You’re just—you don’t really need _me_ , do you?”

“All right, what’s really going on? You’ve been acting weird ever since we left the house and if I’ve done something to upset you, I apologize but if I haven’t, then you have _got_ to stop taking your fucking sour mood out on me, all right?”

“I’m not _sour_.” Benedict snapped. It was the most sour he’d ever sounded in his life and he couldn’t even convince himself that he wasn’t angry.

“Well you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t—it’s not—you just need someone to kill zombies. Keep you safe. You would have been perfectly fine with anyone but you’re stuck with me. Do you think I don’t miss my family too? I don’t like this. I _hate_ this. None of us took it seriously, you know? You remember how it was. One minute we’re arguing over who’s going to pay for dinner and the next minute there are zombies parading through the streets of Los Angeles. And I’m still alive and I feel like I shouldn’t be and I don’t know why I am. This is too much, Martin. It’s not just some role I’m researching. It’s not something I can stop _being_ at the end of the day. I can’t drive on home and put my feet up and watch telly and forget about everything until I have to wake up the next day and do it all again. I have to _keep doing this_. And it doesn’t mean anything because you—you don’t even want me here. You don’t want _me_ here. I’m only as good as the zombie I’m killing and—we’re mates but—but I’m not who you should be with right now and we both know it.”

He hated being mad at Martin. He _wasn’t_ mad at Martin. If anything, he was more in love with him than ever before but there was proximity and there was want and there _wasn’t_ fulfillment and it was brewing together and making Benedict’s chest ache and his limbs feel like they weighed a thousand pounds apiece.

“I’m scared.” Benedict said.

And there they were: the words that had been lurking in his mind had finally joined forces and were now on a mission to purge him of everything that had been burning inside him ever since the uprising began. “I’m so fucking _scared_. I’m scared that I can’t do this. I’ve been playing the role, just like you said. I’ve been trying _so hard_ because I know it’s what I’m supposed to do. But—I don’t think I can do this forever, Martin. This isn’t what I’m made to do. This isn’t what _we’re_ made to do. Look around. Look at how many people died. We’re so god damn lucky.”

“We might have started lucky,” Martin said. “But we’re not lucky anymore. This, what we’re doing, this isn’t luck. This is _surviving_. We’re strong.  _You’re_ strong.”

“I can’t say strong forever. Eventually, I’m going to break. Eventually, there are going to be too many of them and I’m going to be too weak to fight them off and I’m going to get bitten or worse, _you’re_ going to get bitten and it’s going to be my fault and what the hell is going to happen then? I’m supposed to whack you over the head with an axe like you’re—like you were never _you_? Or just let you go on as one of them? That’s where we’re headed, Martin. You ever thought about how you were going to die? Here’s your answer. I can hold them off for now, I’ve been holding them off but I’m not going to last. I _am_ going to break. And I can’t let that happen because—you need me.”

“Now, let me see if I’ve got this,” Martin said. “One minute ago I didn’t need you at all and the next minute you’re beating yourself up because you have to stay strong for me? I want to be supportive, I really do, but you aren’t making any sense.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You know what I mean. You don’t need _me_. But you need someone for now and you’re just—I know what you’re doing.” Benedict said, biting his lip.

“And what might that be?” Martin asked.

“You’re _settling_. For me. Because you’re lonely and I’m all you have.”

“Well, you’re right, actually. I am lonely and you are all I have but I’m not—Ben, I’m not _settling_ for you. You’re making it sound like we’re—”

“—Then you’re stuck with me, is that what it is? It’s the end of the world and out of everyone, you’re stuck with me. I mean, it’s not like you had any choice, right?”

“Of course I had a choice! I could have gone off on my own, you know,” Martin said, walking toward Benedict. “I could have said ‘No, I’m not going to spend three days in a hotel room with you while you fight zombies and no, I’m not going to get on the back of your motorcycle and drive off with you and no, I’m not going to let you bandage up my leg or let you risk your fucking life for me every god damn step of the way.’ But I did.”

“It’s not just that.” Benedict muttered.

Without hesitation, Martin reached out and took Benedict’s hands. Ordinarily, Benedict might have pulled away, fearing that somehow Martin would sense the desirous tingle in his palms but he was too exhausted and too touch-starved to even consider the possibility of balking from Martin’s affection. Besides, he realized, _it was Martin’s affection, God they’re Martin’s hands and they’re soft and they’re warm and they’re touching mine and there’s the callous on the middle finger of his left hand and his nails need trimming but I bet they’d feel good against my skin and—_

“ _—_ We’re in this together, okay?” Martin said, and Benedict let go of his thoughts, but not Martin’s hands. “I care about you a lot. I’m grateful, really fucking grateful, that I was having dinner with you the night this happened. I’m grateful that you took care of me when I hurt my leg. I’m grateful that I’m not alone, and not just because—just—don’t for one second think that I don’t appreciate you or that I’m settling for you or that I wouldn’t choose you, okay? I actually—”

Benedict started to smile a little but froze when he noticed that Martin might have been – no, _definitely was_ – stroking the tips of his fingers. Benedict couldn’t tell if the gesture was affectionate or unintentional or a tantalizing combination of the two but Benedict could not bring himself to tell Martin to stop. The closeness was absolutely delicious but still innocent enough to keep Benedict from feeling too wrong about it. They were just hands, after all. Hands were allowed to touch like this. And it wasn’t as if he and Martin had never touched before – there was even that one night when Martin got a handful of Benedict’s upper thigh. But it had never meant anything, and Benedict had been _sure, absolutely sure beyond a shadow of a doubt_ that Martin’s grip on his leg had been as platonic as such a gesture was capable of being. And so, despite the slow, purposeful patterns Martin’s fingertips were making against Benedict’s, he filed this increasingly affectionate handhold in the same category – standalone physical contact that held absolutely no promise of becoming anything more.

“I’m sorry.” Martin said, pulling his hand away once he realized what he’d been doing.

“No, it’s okay. It was—okay.”

“Just okay?” Martin said with the faintest trace of a grin.

“More than okay.” Benedict murmured.

“Thought so.”

 “I _did_ talk, didn’t I—”

“Always so _verbose_ , you.”

“I—”

“Never heard a man moan my name in his sleep before.”

“God, I can’t bel—”

“Oh, shut up, Ben.” Martin said, and neither man could resist smiling.

Benedict thought about their dinner together on the night of the uprising. There’d been jokes and laughs and pleasant conversation but he’d been so damn _distracted_ by everything Martin didn’t know he was doing. He thought about the moment they heard the dead howling in the streets and how his first instinct had been to protect Martin. He thought about how he’d walked those hotel hallways, absolutely defenseless, in order to find a weapon for himself and food for both of them. He thought about how afraid he felt but the way all his trepidation seemed to fade whenever he knew Martin needed him – because Martin _did_ need him, even if his need was just for now and not forever.

And he thought about how _right_ Martin’s hand felt in his own.

“Martin—”

“I know it’s wrong.” Martin said, looking down at the floor.

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“I know, but if you were about to say what I think you were about to say, I can’t hear it.”

Benedict’s chest burned. Vulnerability never sat well with him and it was doing a hell of a number on him now, twisting his heart in its hands and presenting him with two options, each of a very different nature: one was to pretend the conversation wasn’t occurring and had never occurred, and the other was to grab Martin’s face in his hands and give him the best fucking kiss he’d ever had. At least then his feelings would be on display and he’d have earned the surge of embarrassment coursing through him.

“Forget it.” Benedict said.

“We both know that’s not going to happen.” Martin said. “For what it’s worth—never mind.”

“No, what?”

“You really don’t know?”

“Apparently I don’t.”

Martin leaned in and pressed his lips to Benedict’s and gave him a kiss that Benedict could feel in every part of his body, including his fingers which were weaving their way through Martin’s hair and pulling him even closer. He took out his years of longing on Martin’s lips, practically punishing them for not kissing him sooner. It was everything he’d imagined, both soft and hesitant and hungry and urgent and when Martin’s tongue slid against his, Benedict moaned in spite of himself. He didn’t want to let on how much he’d needed this, didn’t want to give Martin the satisfaction of knowing the depths of his desperation but when Martin dug his nails into Benedict’s neck, Benedict suspected that Martin had some suppressed desires of his own.

“Fuck.” Martin said, pulling away from Benedict and licking his lips.

“I think I need a cigarette.” Benedict said.

“Hell, I think _I_ need one.”

Martin’s face was still so close, close enough for another kiss. Benedict could feel his opportunity slipping away but he knew he couldn’t bring himself to do it again. It _was_ wrong. So wrong. He could practically taste the wrong on his lips and yet all he wanted to do was come back for more, to suck on Martin’s lower lip until his toes curled, thrust him up against the hood of the car, grab Martin’s wrists and hold him down and show him exactly what he’d been missing. He was consumed by nearly every filthy thought he’d had about Martin and being presented with even the vaguest chance of indulging them was positively intoxicating.

“No.” Benedict said, reluctantly relinquishing his grasp on Martin. “We both know we can’t do this.”

“We have a funny way of showing it.” Martin said.

Benedict took Martin’s face in his hands, tilted it up toward him and kissed him again. Softer this time, sweet and chaste and exactly the opposite of what every other part of him desperately wanted. He lingered on the kiss, memorizing the softness of Martin’s lips. He knew that later on, he’d start to wonder about the kiss ( _was I any good, I hope he liked it as much as I did, I wonder if that’s how he kisses everyone or just how he kisses me and God I don’t even care I just want him to kiss me again_ ), but for now he urged his mind to stay in the moment, concentrating on nothing but Martin’s kiss and—his heart burned—Martin’s hands finding their way around Benedict’s hips as they pulled him even closer.

“How did you not know?” Martin said, pressing his forehead to Benedict’s, his voice barely audible. “You know it’s always been about you, right? You had to have known—you just-- _how could you not have known_? It’s not—it’s not about the zombies, Benedict. It’s about you. It’s always been you.”

There was such desperation in his voice that Benedict thought kissing him again might have been an act of mercy. Instead, he wrapped his arms around Martin and breathed him in. He didn’t care that Martin hadn’t bathed in two days or that his own clothes were encrusted in zombie blood – by all accounts, he should have been disgusted but he felt nothing but content. They’d hugged before but this hug was something different altogether – it was a mutual understanding. There was no _does he_ or _will he ever_ or _what if_ – it was _this is_ with just enough _we can’t_ to keep Benedict from hugging him too tightly.

“You know that this can’t happen though, right?” Benedict whispered. “We’ve gotten that out of our systems but—that’s it.”

“Yes.” Martin said. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

They pulled away from each other and stared down at the road as if it possessed some deep-seated answer to every question.

“And if we haven’t,” Martin said. “If we haven’t gotten it out of our systems, what happens then?”

“Then we’ll deal with that later.” Benedict said.

“So we’re going to pretend—”

“—this never happened, right.”

 “Guess we won’t be sharing a bed anymore.” Martin said, grinning a little.

Benedict considered this. At this point, any form of close proximity to Martin was tempting in its own right but sleeping next to him seemed downright dangerous. He ached for one more kiss, even if it came in the form of Martin’s lips pressed lightly against his cheek.

“No. We can,” Benedict said. And suddenly, he was Benedict Cumberbatch: Zombie Fighter again. “That reminds me, we’ll need to figure out where we’re sleeping tonight. I know it’s the middle of the day but once night falls, the zombies are going to get restless and we’re not going to want to be on the road anymore. The last thing we need is to be caught without shelter.”

“I don’t see much around here.” Martin licked his lips and a strange heat burned through Benedict’s body and radiated into the arches of his feet. It occurred to him that Martin could taste those kisses and for some reason, that thought made the world seem larger. _No matter what happens from here on out, if the entire world disappears right this very moment, there was a time when Martin’s lips tasted like mine. There was a timeline of events that led to a zombie apocalypse and a bloody axe in the backseat of a car and a gore-streaked desert highway and—a_ kiss _._

“We could sleep in the car, I guess.” Martin offered.

“No,” Benedict said sharply. “Absolutely not.”

“Then what do we—”

“We keep on driving,” Benedict said. “There must be some sort of place to rest up ahead. We might not end up living in comfort, but we’ll need somewhere to sleep and eat.”

Benedict gave Martin’s shoulder a light squeeze and pulled away from him ( _I love you and I’m in love with you and I’m not walking away from you or rejecting you please don’t let this be the last time that we’re this close_ ).

“The longer we stick around,” Benedict said, entering the car. “the sooner they’ll sniff us out. We have to keep on going.”

Martin nodded as he entered the car.

“Ready?” Benedict asked over the sound of the engine starting.

“Ready.”

The silent, undisturbed cemetery faded from view and Benedict wondered if the entire act of burying one’s dead was obsolete, now that nearly all who died would have done so by the hand (or mouth) of a zombie. It was better than wondering about what Martin was thinking and better than fixating on the kiss – _their_ kiss – the memory of which seemed to glow around every other thought, misguiding in its promise.


	5. Chapter 5

The highway stretched on as the midday sun sank into mid-afternoon. On the bright side, there were very few zombies. On the not-so-bright side, they hadn’t passed anything that would make a suitable shelter. Benedict knew that they weren’t out of time _yet_ , but he also knew that they stood a greater chance of being attacked at night and he wasn’t particularly keen on spending his evening decapitating a horde of the undead. His limbs were still weak, but for a different reason than before. Kissing Martin seemed to simultaneously invigorate and drain him. Although, he had to admit, he was rather grateful for Martin’s fidelity and devotion to Amanda. Even if Martin had permitted him to do more than just kiss - well, he wasn’t sure _how_ he’d go about doing any of it. His mind was perfectly capable of conjuring up the filthiest fantasies known to man but teaching his lips and hands to translate his desires would be a much different matter.

So they drove on, splitting tinned beans and vegetables and not discussing what had happened even though their kisses still felt fresh on each other’s lips.

“It’s getting late. We’ll take this exit,” Benedict said. “I don’t know if there will _be_ anything, but at least we’ll be off the highway and we might have a better chance of finding somewhere to spend the night.”

Martin nodded.

The car curved along the exit, revealing a long stretch of road, devoid of cars and corpses.

“This isn’t good.” Benedict said.

“What do you mean? This is the first time all day we’ve seen some part of the earth that isn’t covered in a blanket of human entrails and bloody _limbs_.”

“Which is a welcome change, I agree. But the zombies around here are going to be especially voracious.” Benedict said. “Fewer people, fewer zombies, _hungrier_ zombies. Their senses are probably heightened right now so even though there aren’t going to be as many of them, we’re still going to have to be as vigilant as ever, all right?”

Martin nodded again.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Everything’s fine, yeah. Sorry. Just—well—yeah.”

“If there’s something wrong, you might as well tell me now.”

 _Or you could just kiss me_ , Benedict thought. Already, he was being conditioned to believe that serious discussions with Martin might lead to kisses and if that’s what it would take to get Martin to put that tongue to an obscene use that _didn’t_ involve excessive amounts of cursing, he’d indulge a bit of Martin’s rage and frustration.

“No, nothing’s wrong. I promise. I’m just _starving_ , that’s all. And we’ve been driving for ages.”

“Up ahead,” Benedict said, nodding his head toward the windshield. “Look. There are—shops, or something.”

He slowed down the car a little and pulled up to a small shopping complex on the left-hand side of the road. There were a few cars in the parking lot, some with bloody and broken windows but for the most part, the stretch of pavement and the shops looked to be in remarkably good condition, given the state of the rest of the world.

“Ben, please tell me I’m reading that sign correctly.”

“Which— _oh_!” Benedict said. It took him about an instant to realize that Martin was referring to a large green sign adorned with a minimalist mountain-shaped logo.

“You’ve _got_ to be fucking kidding me.” Martin said.

“And you said we weren’t lucky.” Benedict said, grinning.

“I take it back,” Martin said. “We are the two luckiest zombie apocalypse-surviving fuckers this world has ever known. That store’s going to have camping supplies, tents, _fresh clothes_ —”

 _Don’t think about air mattresses_ , Benedict thought as his mind drifted toward exactly what he shouldn’t have been thinking about.

“Someone’s definitely been in there,” Benedict said, pointing toward the front door of the shop. “So, like I said, we’re going to have to be very careful. If there’s a zombie in there, it probably hasn’t eaten in a while and it’s going to think we’re its next meal.”

“Do you think it would be a safe place to stay for tonight?” Martin asked.

“I think it’s probably the safest place we’re going to find for now, yeah. I’m not wild about the large glass windows but I think there’s probably something in there we can use to reinforce them. Also, it’s a good thing we found this place when we did. Tank’s almost completely empty.”

“Might have to steal one of these cars, what do you think?”

“We could. I don’t really know how to hotwire cars though so we’d have to find a set of keys again, which might be tricky. And our whole Grand Theft Auto: Zombie Apocalypse plan has a very limited shelf life. Eventually, these car batteries are going to die and we’ll have to find some other way to get around. I know we still have a bit of time until that happens, but I don’t want us to get too attached to driving. Want to head inside?” Benedict asked.

“Right behind you.”

They exited the car and Benedict opened the back door to retrieve the blood-encrusted axe., He and Martin headed for the entrance to the shop. Carefully, Benedict tried the front door and found that it was unlocked.

“Like I said, there’s definitely been someone here. Be on the alert.”

There were no corpses – human or zombie – and there wasn’t any blood but Benedict knew better than to let down his guard and lower his axe. The store was in a state of tidy disarray, as if someone had rummaged through the merchandise, taken exactly what he or she needed and left the rest behind for anyone who might happen upon the shop.

“Martin,” Benedict asked. “Do you hear anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Good.”

He stepped in further, slipping between two checkout lanes. On the wall, crudely written in spray-paint, were the words:

_TAKE WHAT YOU NEED._

_POSSIBLE OUTPOST EAST._

_FIND IT IF YOU CAN._

“Outpost,” Martin murmured. “What do you suppose—?”

“I have no idea,” Benedict replied. “Someone clearly knows something we don’t. And that someone got the hell out of here.”

Benedict made a sweep of the interior of the shop – some sections had been thoroughly picked over but the shop was safe and quiet and it would be a convenient place for Benedict and Martin to retire for the evening.

They took turns washing up in the employee bathroom and picked new clothes off the racks.

“I know you’re probably tempted to pick something comfortable,” Benedict said. “But you don’t want to wear anything too loose, nothing a zombie could grab on to. Tight clothes work best.”

He was met with amused incredulity: “You just want to see me in one of these skin-tight bicyclist’s outfits, you can say it.”

“I’m serious, Martin!”

They set to work making the shop fit for habitation. Martin inflated an air mattress, Benedict tried not to think about the implications present in the fact that Martin only inflated _one_ , and Benedict hung large sections of blue tarp over the storefront windows. It was a crude method of concealment but it was the best he could do at a moment’s notice.

They helped themselves to a set of camping cookware and a few packages of freeze-dried chicken noodle soup (“Sixteen grams of protein!” Martin observed.) which didn't taste too bad once they added some of their own tinned vegetables. It was quite far removed from the fine fare they’d enjoyed on the night of the uprising, but sitting in their (stolen) pajamas on the floor of a sporting goods store and slurping up lukewarm soup somehow felt more intimate than the restaurant ever had.

“Why do you think you’re so fearless?” Martin asked as he scraped at the bottom of his soup bowl with his spoon.

“I’m not fearless,” Benedict said. “Earlier today, I told you I was scared as all hell.”

“You’re scared of something happening to one of us, yeah. But you’re not scared of _them_. A zombie could jump up from behind you right now and you’d just—” Martin mimed as if he were swinging an axe.

“Don’t know,” Benedict said. “I think—well, you know about what happened to me, and I think when you almost die, it kind of knocks the fear right out of you. You still _feel_ fear, but not about the same things. Because you know that, no matter what happens to you, no matter how scary things get, it’s never going to be as terrifying as that first moment you thought you were going to die. So you try to outsmart that moment, try to keep it on its toes so it doesn’t track you down and make you feel it again. You know what I mean?”

“I think I do.” Martin said quietly. “I admire that, you know.”

“Oh, stop.”

“No, I do. I genuinely do.”

“You know the thing we’re not supposed to talk about?” Martin asked.

Benedict laughed a little. “Yes?”

“Can I just ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“How long have you—I mean, when did you—”

“In general, or just you?”

Martin considered this. “Just me.”

“Oh, way back,” Benedict said, grinning. “We’re talking that table reading we did before the first episode. I knew who you were but I’d never really—you cracked a joke or something and you smiled at me and right away, I knew I was in trouble. You?”

“In general, or just you?” Martin repeated.

“In general, actually.”

“Just you.”

“Really?” Benedict said, hoping that he wasn’t blushing too ferociously. It was one thing to have learned that Martin harbored some sort of _longing_ for him but he was positively astounded to learn that he was the first man Martin had ever loved.

“Yeah, you kind of snuck up on me.” Martin said with a smile.

“What about Amanda?” Benedict asked tentatively.

“She’s the love of my life.” Martin said. Benedict knew better than to let his heart sink but it did so anyway, settling somewhere in the vicinity of his knees and feeling a bit too much like it was in a thousand pieces. _Oh, don’t do this. Don’t get attached. It’s bad enough you’re in love with him – don’t go and fall in love with the fact that he loves you too._ “She’s everything to me. She _gets_ me, you know? And she loves me like I love her and—”

Benedict hadn’t realized that he’d been hanging his head until Martin paused.

“—and if I didn’t know what I know, that _look_ would have given everything away.” Martin said, grinning. “But I also know something you don’t.”

“And what might that be?”

“Well,” Martin said, with the slyest of sly grins. “She and I talked about _everything_. And—well, you know everyone is sort of allowed that _one_ person that they could have a one-night stand with and it would be all right?”

“Yeah…” Benedict said, making a concerted effort not to choke on his sip of bottled water.

“Do you need me to spell it out?” Martin said, laughing.

“You’re _kidding_.” Benedict said. “Amanda—she _knows_?”

“To an extent, yeah. Actually, I think she thought I was kidding but she played along and I took her at her word. I can’t _believe_ we’re discussing this, mate. It’s too weird.”

“So we’d basically be allowed to—”

Martin shrugged. _No, don’t shrug. Less shrugging, more stripping down to nothing in the middle of a sporting goods shop and shagging me senseless._

“I wish she and I hadn’t parted on bad terms," he said, and Benedict marveled at how efficiently Martin knew how to snuff out Benedict’s burning depravity. “You know, I don’t even remember what she and I were fighting about. Not that it matters but it mustn’t have been anything worthwhile if I don’t even remember. I love her so much, Ben. And I feel like all these thoughts are weighing me down, like I’m never going to be okay until I know for sure whether or not I’m going to see her and the kids again. Or talk to them. Or _anything_. Every day, it feels like they’re getting farther and farther away from me. Like when you’re running in a dream, trying to chase someone down, and you can never catch up.”

“Speaking of dreaming, we should get some sleep,” Benedict said. “We’ll stay here for a little while tomorrow, stock up on supplies and keep on moving.”

“I wish we could just stay,” Martin said. “All this driving. And it seems like we’re going nowhere.”

“I promise you, we’re going somewhere. It’s not a good idea to stay in one place, especially not somewhere unfamiliar. We don’t really know this area, but we _do_ know that the zombies here are going to be more aggressive. It’s safe for now but the longer we stay in one place, the greater the chance of an attack.”

“I know, I know,” Martin said. “I just miss having a proper home.”

Benedict nodded. “We will again. Someday. This is just how it has to be for now.”

Martin nodded in return.

“And,” Benedict said. “apparently, there’s an outpost. Or rumors of one, at least. So there are other survivors.”

“Or there _were_.”

“Nah, there are people who must have been far more prepared than either of us, and somehow we’re still here. There are people who were probably planning for this for ages.”

“I bet we thought they were mad, thinking there were going to be fucking zombies roaming the streets.”

“I know I did. Now—well, now we’re killing them.”

“ _You’re_ killing them,” Martin said. “I’m not sure I have it in me to do what you do.”

“You’d be surprised. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it either but—I guess it’s a little easier when you remind yourself that they’re not proper humans anymore. They’ve got human bodies, sure, but any humanity up here—” he said, tapping his own temple with his forefinger, “—is long gone.”

Martin let out a long, drawling yawn, Benedict caught it and they both realized that they were each extremely tired.

“I take it we’re sharing that?” Benedict said, nodding in the direction of the air mattress.

“I just thought—it seemed safer to be together.” Martin said quietly. “If you don’t want—”

“—You’re right. It is safer that way.”

They climbed into bed and the mattress shifted beneath their weight, rocking back and forth as they made themselves comfortable.

“Not bad.” Martin said. “Nothing like the five-star hotel, but considering how we _could_ be sleeping, this is kind of all right.”

Benedict pulled the covers over them.

“If you talk in your sleep, I’ll just kick you a little. How about that?” Martin said.

“Sounds good.”

Benedict waited for the awkwardness to set in, and was happy when it didn’t. He closed his eyes.

“Ben?”

“Mmm-hmm?” he replied sleepily.

“You know how—well, you know how earlier today, before we—you mentioned—I mean, if one of us _does_ get attacked, we have to think about what we’d do.”

 _I don’t want to_. “I know.”

“You’d have to kill me,” Martin said. “or I’d have to kill you.”

“I—Martin, where’s this coming from?”

“It’s just been on my mind. Ever since you mentioned it. I don’t _want_ it to happen, of course, but I do think we need to make a promise, here and now, that if something happens to one of us…” he trailed off.

“That we kill whoever’s infected, you mean.”

“You’re the logical one here. You’re the good survivor. I’m just—trying to plan ahead too, I guess.”

Benedict turned toward Martin and locked eyes with him.

“I want you to tell me exactly what you’re worried about,” Benedict said. With only the vaguest trace of hesitation, he wrapped his arm around Martin’s waist. It was intended to be a gesture of friendship and comfort but when his fingers met the warmth of Martin’s skin radiating from beneath his pajama pants, his heart still skipped a beat.

“I’m worried you’re going to leave me,” Martin said, and his voice just _sounded_ like held-back tears. “I’m worried that something’s going to happen to you and I’m going to be completely alone. I can’t live like that, constantly fearing that I’m going to end up on my own.”

Benedict looked at Martin with _can I_ eyes, Martin nodded, and Benedict kissed him, letting his lips linger for a beat longer than necessary.

“It’s going to be okay.” Benedict said against Martin’s cheek. Without thinking, he nuzzled against him and curled up into his chest, taking in his new-clothes-and-soap scent. He laced his fingers between Martin’s.

“Promise me you’ll do it, okay? Promise me that if I get infected, you’ll kill me before I turn into one of them. I can’t—I can’t be one of them, I just can’t. The thought of being _that_ , of being some undead version of myself, hurting other people…”

Benedict swallowed the lump in his throat.

“I can promise you that I will not have to do it, that I am going to keep you safe no matter what and that you’ll never have to worry. But if I fail—then, yes. As long as you would do the same for me.”

“What, if they get you?” Martin said. “They’ll _never_ get you. You’ll decapitate them before they even think about biting you.”

Benedict smiled a little, and craned his neck up to plant a delicate kiss on Martin’s chin. He closed his eyes and thought of good things: about how this was the day he and Martin finally kissed and how fucking _good_ the kiss had been. He thought about the lucky little sporting goods store and the fact that he was falling asleep against Martin’s chest, their fingers intertwined.

_“Stand back.” Benedict whispered. He and Martin were crouched against the side of the car. It was hard to see the zombies but there was no mistaking that dry scrape of bare feet against the pavement._

_“Three.” Martin whispered into Benedict’s ear._

_“Four.” Benedict corrected, nodding his head toward a smaller, less conspicuous zombie hidden by the three larger, more imposing zombies before it._

_“Axe ready?” Martin asked._

_“Shh.” Benedict interrupted, pressing his index finger to Martin’s lips. The warmth of physical contact caused a slight disruption on Benedict’s vigilance but he gritted his teeth and tried not to think about anything other than besting the small group of zombies heading their way._

_Benedict took a chance and peered through the passenger side window of the car, only to find a zombie staring back at him through the opposite window. It was wide-eyed, its teeth were bared and its hair and skin were encrusted in the dried blood of its previous victim._

_“Martin,”  Benedict whispered. “Martin, it saw me.”_

_Benedict ducked._

_“Stay behind me.” Benedict ordered._

_“No, I—”_

_He was interrupted by a throaty growl and Benedict turned to find the zombie standing next to him, reaching hungrily. Before Benedict could strike, two more zombies appeared about ten meters away with a third bringing up the rear. It was an eerie, slow-motion parade of the undead and Benedict knew that they didn’t have much time._

_“Stay behind me.” Benedict hissed again. Just as he was about to raise his axe and decapitate the nearest zombie, it raised its rotting arm and batted the axe right out of Benedict’s grip. It lunged past Benedict, knocking him to the ground, just as its hands found their way to Martin’s shoulders. Before he could defend himself, the zombie’s teeth were buried in his flesh._

_The zombie wasn’t even biting him but Benedict swore he could feel it. He thought he understood the full extent of physical anguish as the zombie’s teeth pierced Martin’s skin but when they sank in deeper, latching on and separating flesh from bone, he felt a searing, brutal surge that simply couldn’t be encompassed by the word “pain”. There were bloodstained teeth making quick work of Martin’s limbs and the ineffable, raw phantom pain pulsing through Benedict. There was nothing else._

The axe _, Benedict thought. He groped at the pavement as he attempted to reach for it. God, he could just about feel that smooth wooden handle graze his fingertips but thepainthepainthepainthepain. He gritted his teeth and lunged once more and felt a surge of electricity course through him as he wrapped his hand around it._

_He stood, triumphant, and with several skull-splitting swings, the crowd of zombies was reduced to a blood-seeping mass. As he caught his breath, the name Martin worked its way through the layers of agony and nestled in his blurry haze of conscious thought. Benedict stumbled around the necrotic-flesh wreckage and found Martin lying slumped against the ground, his mangled arm jutting out at an unnatural angle._

_“Martin, no.” Benedict said, cradling Martin in his arms. “Martin, please be okay. Please be okay God please don’t let this have happened, please—”_

_Martin mouth attempted to form a response._

_“K-kill—”_

_“No!” Benedict said, holding Martin even closer._

_Martin nudged his good arm toward the blade of the axe and his eyes widened beseechingly._

_“P-please—k—”_

_“No.” Benedict repeated._

_“I won’t do it. I know we talked about it and I know I said I would but…”_ _His words were thin and tight, as if it was taking every bit of him to suppress his tears. Something had to give, and his ability to speak had been given low priority._

_He ran his fingers along Martin’s cheek._

_“…that was when I thought that you’d be here forever.”_

_”Pl—”_

_A single tear fell from Benedict’s eye, slipped down the bridge of his nose and found a home in one of Martin’s open wounds._

_“I’d rather die than kill you.” Benedict said._

_Martin grunted in protest._

_“I’d rather die than kill you, Martin.” he said again, softer this time, and with a bit more uncertainty._

_This was an entirely new category of pain, one that came with no physical manifestation. It was of absolutely no comfort to him to think of all those who’d died in the same street, gnawed to bits by zombies._

_“I’m sorry, Martin,” Benedict said. “You know why I can’t do this, don’t you?” I bet you’ve always known. That when it got down to it I’d just—I’d love you too damn much. You’ll be fine, Martin. Maybe I’ll be the last thing you’ll remember. Before you stop remembering anything.”_

_Benedict rocked Martin in his arms. Nothing felt like anything. He closed his eyes and focused on the sting of his tears as the light faded from Martin’s eyes—_

Benedict gasped as he woke, a cold sweat glistening on his brow. He reached next to him and found Martin, sleeping peacefully, unaware of what Benedict’s subconscious had forced him to endure.

“Martin,” Benedict said, shaking him. “Martin, you’re okay. You’re okay.”

Martin mumbled something that mostly sounded like _what are you talking about_.

“I had a dream you—you were—”

He was interrupted by his own mouth on Martin’s neck, kissing helplessly and foolishly. _Oh, this was good. This was so good_. He’d spent all damn day wondering if he’d ever get his chance again, if that highway kiss was all that there would ever be. But no, there was more and his hands were moving of their own volition, demanding that Martin get as close to him as possible. He moaned against Martin’s skin. The back of his hand eased its way down Martin’s bare arm and he laced their fingers together as his kisses moved closer and closer to Martin’s sleep-flushed cheek.

“Ben—”

“You were one of them and I—I couldn’t save you—” _kiss_ “—I tried but—” _kiss_ “—they were too fast—” _kiss_ “—I knew I had to—” _kiss and a light nibble on Martin’s ear that elicited a moan of pleasant surprise._

He hitched his leg around Martin’s body and pressed their hips together. Any platonic pretense dissipated as the kisses grew more intense, morphing from sweet and tender to hungry and damn near possessive. He needed Martin and when Martin buried his face in Benedict’s neck and groaned breathlessly into his skin, he knew Martin needed him right back.

“You have no idea what I want to do to you right now.” Benedict whispered.

“Tell me.” Martin whispered back.

 _Oh, I’ll tell you_ , Benedict thought. _I want to tell you that I never imagined it would be like this. See, I’d always fantasized about taking you right up against a wall, grabbing you by the wrists and pinning them above your head as I kissed your neck. I’d run my tongue along your collarbone, maybe biting you a little here and there, just enough to leave a mark. Because you like it kind of rough, don’t you? You'd want biting and scratching and screaming, I just know it. And then I’d work my way down, finally dropping to my knees and you know what would happen then? You’d fuck the hell out of my mouth, that’s what would happen. There’d be no biting then, I promise. Just my lips and my tongue and your cock and you’d be holding back, panting and straining and trying not to make a god-damn sound and I’d stop everything only to whisper, “No, Martin. Please. I want to hear you.” Because I’ve always imagined what you’d sound like. And I bet right at that moment, you’d be fucking loud, wouldn’t you? Not caring who would hear you. I think just hearing your moans would probably be enough to get me off, right then and there. And I’d have you absolutely begging for it and you’d pull on my hair and cry out as you came and I’d—_

 _—feel horribly, disgustingly, unforgivably guilty_. Oh, he’d never felt so guilty in all his life. This was the closest he’d ever been to having Martin, _really_ having Martin but his conscience had apparently taken note of his intentions and decided to drop in for a visit right as Benedict’s hand was slipping its way beneath Martin’s loose-fitting ( _damn it, did my ‘tight clothes’ speech mean nothing_ ) pajamas.

“I can’t,” Benedict said into the heat of Martin’s neck. “ _We_ —can’t. I want to—you have no idea how badly I want to. But you know we can’t.”

“I understand,” Martin said. “I can’t even _tell_ you how bad I want to. But I like this, though. Just being close, just like this.”

“I do too.” Benedict said lazily, still not letting go of Martin’s hand.

“Ben?”

“Mmm?”

“You know that I—you _do_ know, don’t you?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And you also?”

“Yes.”

It was as close to _I love you_ as they could get for the time being, but the intent settled warmly in Benedict’s heart and, judging by the way Martin nudged a little closer and pressed his cheek to the nape of Benedict’s neck, it agreed with Martin’s heart as well.

Benedict kissed Martin once more, even though was sure that the terms of the alleged “one-night stand” might have allowed for more. But he found that being as close as they were felt every bit as fulfilling as anything they wouldn’t end up doing and Benedict allowed himself to get lost in it, greedily soaking up Martin’s warmth and affection. For a moment, there were no zombies. There was nothing else in the entire world except for Martin’s breaths and Benedict’s hands in Martin’s hair and the devastatingly sweet realization that he loved someone who loved him back. It was everything, and it was enough.


	6. Chapter 6

Benedict woke first, still folded up tight in the warmth of Martin’s arms. It took him a moment to piece the previous night together – in his sleepy haze, he remembered something about a fatal zombie attack and something about a blow job. He was relieved when he realized that the former had been a dream, and disappointed when he realized that the latter had been a fantasy. The faint yellow halo peeking through the tarp around the windows told Benedict that the sun had risen, and that he and Martin had made it through another night.

He got up carefully, as not to wake Martin, and stretched. He rifled through his backpack and found that he only had three cigarettes left – definitely not enough to get through the day, much less the entire morning, and he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to secure another pack. He decided that he’d allow himself one this morning, one in the afternoon around lunchtime, and he’d smoke the last one in the evening – he tried not to let the phrase _post-coital_ become too attached to that last cigarette but once _Martin’s head resting on my chest, hair slightly damp with sweat, taking soft shallow sated breaths_ passed through his mind, it was difficult to think of that last cigarette in any other context.

Benedict selected a change of clothes, walked through the back of the store, armed with his pack of cigarettes and his axe (he was certain that no zombies had managed to sneak in while they were sleeping, but he figured that it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared). He washed up in the bathroom and changed into a soft and breathable workout shirt and a new pair of jeans (which were against the ‘no loose clothing’ rule he’d established the night before but after assessing the clothing selection, he decided that he’d forgo that particular rule in order to avoid the Lycra shorts. Even if Martin was the only one who’d see him.) He sat at the table in the break room, ate an energy bar ( _waffle-_ flavored, which seemed equal parts perplexing and intriguing, although ultimately disgusting) and washed it down with water. It was the first time he’d been able to sit alone and collect his thoughts since the uprising began and he had to admit that the solitude was welcome. Being around Martin was like being consumed by every single possible emotion. Sometimes he enjoyed it, like when Martin’s hands were in his hair and his tongue was in his mouth and he could practically taste just how badly Martin wanted him. But the sweetness of Martin’s kisses couldn’t mask the sourness of guilt that followed. No matter how badly he and Martin wanted one another, every kiss was a little slice of betrayal and Benedict wasn’t sure anything would ever make it right.

He realized that he’d been doodling absentmindedly on a sheet of paper, just abstract swirls and loops that amounted to nothing. He turned the paper over and decided to make a list:

** WHAT WE KNOW: **

  * Zombie virus is passed on through blood. (Mainly by biting.)
  * Must destroy zombie’s brain in order to kill it.
  * Cutting off limbs slows zombie down, but will not destroy it.
  * Bodies should be burned to keep disease from spreading. (Must get better at doing this.)



** WHAT WE DON’T KNOW: **

  * How long it takes to become infected after contact with zombie.
  * Symptoms of zombie virus. (Fever?)
  * If virus can be spread through scratches or just biting.
  * Whether or not there is an outpost in the east.



** WHAT WE NEED: **

  * Steady food supply.
  * Reliable transportation.
  * Lighter fluid and matches.
  * First aid.
  * Martin needs a weapon too.



He underlined the last point several times, determined to keep his dream from becoming a reality. Even though it had not been real, it was still too close for comfort, and far too likely to be ignored. It had been quiet for the past day, but he knew there were still zombies skulking in the shadows and underestimating their numbers and their deadliness could mean the end of everything. He set the pen down on the table and sighed. Martin wasn’t made for zombie killing. It wasn’t that he lacked strength or ferocity (goodness knows that, on a bad day, his rage could probably decimate the entire zombie population), but he lacked the ability to disconnect himself from the fact that the zombies had once been human. Caring would yield to hesitation, and hesitation would lead to death. And he couldn’t watch that happen, not for real.

Benedict grabbed his axe and headed outside to smoke that third-to-last cigarette. The shopping complex had a spacious (mostly empty) back parking lot that he hadn’t bothered to examine the night before. There were a few abandoned vehicles and a large rusted green dumpster. Right near the dumpster was a battered old utility van. Its potential usefulness was not lost on Benedict, and as he approached it, axe in hand, he hoped to find that its keys were still in the ignition.

He extended his hand and jerked open the driver’s side door. The corpse inside had been so sufficiently ravaged by the zombies that came before that it had been unable to transition into a zombie – and it was a grim reflection of the fate that awaited both Benedict and Martin if they stayed.

After he’d carefully removed the keys from the ignition (while whispering _fucking thank you, whatever I did to deserve this, thank you_ ) he walked around to the other side to inspect the contents of the van. The large side door slid open with a clunky creak, revealing a matted-down carpet interior and very few supplies other than a small toolbox, a thick length of rope, some two-by-fours twined together—

—and a crowbar.

And at that moment, Benedict knew _exactly_ what to do.

~

“Martin, wake up,” Benedict said, nudging Martin. “Wake up. I have a surprise for you.”

“Everything all right?” Martin mumbled.

“Everything’s fine.  Look at this.”

“Is it breakf— _that’s_ a crowbar.” Martin said, pressing his palms against his eyes in sleepy protest.

“It is.”

“Ben, why are you showing me a crowbar at the crack of dawn?”

“Just get up,” He leaned down and gripped Martin’s arm. “Get up, get dressed—” he tossed some clean clothes in Martin’s direction. “—and we’ll get started.”

Martin took the clothes, nodded, and ducked behind one of the checkout counters.

“You can’t change your clothes in front of me?” Benedict said.

“I just need privacy, okay?”

“Privacy my arse.” Benedict said, clearing his throat. “I mean—well—we’ve kissed and shared a bed and I was about a nanosecond away from giving you a hand job last night. And you’re hiding behind Register Three to change your clothes?”

“There,” Martin said, emerging from behind the counter. “Benedict, what the absolute fucking hell is that.” He gestured toward the pile of stuffed clothing leaning against the wall – it had been crafted into a vague approximation of a human and topped with a basketball, upon which Benedict had drawn thick black X’s.

“Target practice. It’s going to be harder with a moving target, but I want you to work on your aim. Now, the crowbar has some advantages and disadvantages. Are you listening?”

“I’m—still kind of asleep.” Martin said.

“Wake up. This is important,” Benedict said. “First, the crowbar is good because it’s lightweight and easily transportable. Plus, it’s going to be useful if we ever need to break into another house to sleep or steal— _take_ , I guess—supplies or anything. Second, a quick jab right through a zombie’s eye will pierce the brain case and destroy the zombie, so a well-timed and well-aimed hit is all you’ll need. The _problem_ with it is that it’s a close-range weapon so you have to be relatively near the zombie you’re fighting for the crowbar to be effective, which means you’ll probably be in biting range as well. And this is precisely why you’re going to practice and you’re not going to give up.”

“Remind me why we can’t just find a gun and shoot them in the head.”

“Because,” Benedict said, attempting to mask his exasperation. “they’re drawn to loud noises. Which includes gunfire. Besides, you can only shoot a _loaded_ gun. Once you run out of bullets, the gun’s pretty much useless unless you plan on pistol-whipping a zombie with it – fun, I’m sure, but you can’t damage a zombie’s brain that way.”

“You _really_ think I can do this?” Martin said.

“I really think you can do this.”

“All right.”

He took the crowbar from Benedict.

“Try to aim for the eye I’ve drawn on there.” Benedict instructed. He pulled Martin back slightly.

“And step back a bit. There you go. You don’t want to wait until you’re right on top of the zombie until you start swinging. You want to give yourself a few seconds to wind back and aim. Force _and_ accuracy. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Martin swung and the crowbar sank through the drywall.

“All right. Not the zombie’s eye, but that was a hell of a swing. Once you work on your aim, you’ll be taking down zombies in no time.”

Martin smiled a little. “Try again?”

“By all means. We’re not going to stop until you’ve gotten it just right.”

He took a few more swings, none of which made contact with the drawn-on zombie eye.

“I really am trying.” Martin said.

“I know.”

Martin attempted a few more swings, all of which were remarkably forceful, but only one of them came close to the zombie’s eye.

“Maybe you’re wrong about me,” Martin said. “Maybe I’m not meant to do this. I mean _clearly_ I can’t fucking do it so why don’t we just keep you on zombie duty and I’ll hang out in the background and just—watch you.” He cocked his head and went a bit glassy-eyed and Benedict realized that Martin’s mind was off in another world in which Benedict Cumberbatch: Zombie Killer was doing what he did best, all filthy and sweaty and bloodstained to boot.

“Focus!” Benedict said.

“I’m just not made for this.” Martin said, shaking his head and tossing the crowbar to the ground.

“I’m trying to help.” Benedict said quietly. “I had that dream last night and—I want you to be able to defend yourself too, okay? As we go on, we’re going to encounter fewer humans and more zombies. People are probably being picked off left and right and I don’t want you to be one of them. If anything happens to me, I want you to be able to defend yourself. But your heart clearly isn’t in this and—”

“I know. I’m—I’m sorry, Ben. It’s just—the idea of killing a zombie. I know I’m not, but I feel like I’m killing a human, you know?”

“Trust me, I know. I still feel like that too. We probably always will and you know something, that’s not the worst thing. That attachment, that sentiment—that’s what separates us from them and if we don’t hang on to that, we’re no better than they are. But do you want to know what I do when the zombies start to feel too human? I don’t think about who I’m killing. I think about who I’m protecting.”

He blushed in spite of himself.

“Me?” Martin asked.

“Yes.”

“God, I want to kiss you right now.” Martin said.

“God, I _want_ you to kiss me right now.”

“God, I want to—to just—fuck you mercilessly right against this checkout counter until you scream so loud that every zombie in a twenty-mile radius hears you.”

“Well there’s something I never thought I’d hear. For many, many reasons,” Benedict said, blushing even more. “And believe me, that sentiment is _more_ than reciprocated.”

“Is it now?”

“Oh, get over yourself Martin. You know that, if presented with the opportunity, I’d shag you so hard you couldn’t walk for a week. And if you can drive that crowbar right through that zombie’s eye, maybe I will.”

He reached down, picked up the crowbar and with one forceful swing, he jammed the crowbar right into the black X on the left.

“You were saying?”

“Did you miss the part when I said ‘maybe’?”

“I must have.” Martin said, walking toward Benedict.

And _fuck_ they were kissing again. Benedict didn’t even know how it happened, only that Martin’s tongue was becoming aggressively reacquainted with his own and Benedict’s back was pressed against the wall and Martin’s hands were everywhere and—

“Martin,” Benedict said, gripping Martin’s by the shoulders and pulling away ever so gently. “You know how badly I want to do this, right?”

“About as badly as I do.”

“Just because we can’t doesn’t mean I’m going to stop wanting this.”

“It’s like I don’t know what to do,” Martin said. “I finally have you but it’s not—it’s under the worst possible circumstances and for the worst possible reasons. And yet somehow, it doesn’t make me want you any less.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

They kissed again. It was the first kiss between them that didn’t make Benedict feel anxious – and it was the kiss that scared him the most. Every other kiss they’d shared felt like it was being exhumed from beneath years of anticipation and imagination but now those layers had been sufficiently pulled away, revealing a soft, comforting meeting of lips with no urgency or lust at all – yet somehow, this kiss was unmatched in its intimacy.

“So what’s the plan for today?” Martin asked.

“The plan,” Benedict said, “is that I’ve found a van in the back parking lot with our names on it. Well, not literally, but it’s a van and it’s got keys and let’s just say I hope we’ll end up luckier than the man who used to own it. Don’t worry, I cleaned it out.” he added when he saw the look of horror in Martin’s eyes. “We’re going to load up the van with everything we can get our hands on – food, clothes, gear, anything we might end up needing. We’re going to keep heading east, just like we were before. If worst come to worst, we can sleep in the van but I’d also like us to grab a tent and a few tarps for underneath the tent, just in case. I don’t really care for the idea of sleeping in a tent but if we set up traps around the perimeter, it should give us an advantage.”

“A tent,” Martin said, looking right into Benedict’s eyes. “Bloody Brokeback Zombie Fighters.”

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t like it.” said Benedict, smirking a little.

They organized their belongings in silence and Benedict had to admit that under normal, non-apocalyptic circumstances, living with Martin would probably be quite nice. There was a sense of camaraderie and teamwork between them that went beyond that suppressed, animalistic need for one another, and it helped him forget why exactly they were stealing merchandise from a sporting goods store.

“Almost done?” Benedict asked. They’d made a neat pile of items toward the rear entrance of the store.

Martin nodded.

“Yup. We’ve got everything.”

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

Benedict opened the back door, but closed it almost immediately.

“Got your crowbar?” Benedict whispered.

“Yeah, why?”

“There are—five? _Damn it_ , they must have sniffed me out when I went to smoke that cigarette. We don’t really have time to come up with a good plan. Be honest with me, Martin. Do you think you’re ready to take them on?”

“With you? Yeah.”

“Good. All right—we’ll take out the zombies first, then load up the van. You know what to do, right?”

“Right through the eye.” Martin said under his breath.

“Exactly.”

“Kiss for good luck?” Martin whispered into Benedict’s ear.

Benedict rolled his eyes and kissed Martin on the cheek.

“You’re ridiculous.” Benedict smiled. “And I l—”

But Martin had already borderline _catapulted_ out the back door and into the parking lot. Benedict followed.

The zombies looked markedly different from the zombies he’d seen in Los Angeles and the ones he’d killed in the suburbs. These looked thinner and somehow more _dead_. It was evident that the low population had denied them the ability to feast on human flesh and they were ravenous for it – it was likely that some of them hadn’t eaten since they’d turned and Benedict was determined to destroy them before he or Martin became their first meal.

Benedict swung his axe through the first zombie’s neck as Martin reluctantly brandished his crowbar in the face of the second. The decapitated zombie head thudded to the ground.

“Crowbar through the eye!” Benedict called. “The skull on the ground!” Martin nodded, kneeled down and jammed the crowbar through the zombie’s left eye socket.

“Well done!” Benedict said, slicing through the third zombie’s neck. He continued until every zombie had been eliminated.

“That’s all of them,” Benedict said. “Martin, want to start loading up the van?”

Martin didn’t answer.

Benedict’s heart pounded as he surveyed the parking lot. There were decapitated zombies and severed heads and several sizeable pools of blood forming at his feet, but Martin was nowhere to be seen.

“Martin?”

He was answered by a series of low growls coming from the direction of the front parking lot and at once, his mind was flooded with images pulled directly from the previous night’s dream: zombie teeth tearing Martin’s flesh, Martin bleeding out on the pavement, Martin’s face growing pale and cold as the last vestiges of life left his body.

Benedict crept toward the front of the building, pressed his back against the stucco façade and tried to catch his breath. His brand-new clothes were already soaked in blood and his hands were trembling.

“Martin!” he called, chancing a brief glimpse around the corner of the wall. There were two zombies circling the edge of the car, one of which appeared to have an injured leg. That would be the easier one to kill, which meant he’d have to take out the faster, more agile zombie first. He gripped his axe and darted from behind the wall and faced the zombies. Their glass-white eyes grew wide at the sight of fresh meat.

“Come on.” Benedict muttered.

The first zombie lunged toward him and Benedict swung blindly and swung hard, clipping the edge of the zombie’s skull and barely breaching the bone. Its head was bleeding but its brain was barely damaged and it looked positively voracious as it continued to advance in Benedict’s direction. Benedict shook his head. _No_. This was not the time for missed attempts and failed attacks. With a loud wail he swung again and this time, his axe sank right into the zombie’s skull. He retrieved the axe just as the zombie slumped to the ground. He turned his attention to the injured zombie before him. Its leg was bleeding and the wound looked fresh – and it occurred to him that perhaps Martin himself had done the damage. But Benedict didn’t have time to make more than a cursory examination of the zombie’s wound before he whirled the axe sideways and sliced right through the zombie’s neck. With another slick smack, he shattered the zombie’s skull.

Benedict tried his hardest to hear Martin’s footsteps or the moan of a zombie as a crowbar plunged through its eye socket or _any_ indication that Martin was alive. But after the battle, all that remained was unwanted silence.

He stepped further into the parking lot and saw another zombie corpse. It was bleeding profusely from its right eye and Benedict found himself smiling a little – Martin had done well.

_Now if only I could find you and congratulate you on a good zombie kill you fucking—_

But before he could finish his thought, he saw a zombie standing over another corpse lying on the ground.

There was a crowbar in the corpse’s left hand.

“Hey!” Benedict called. “You! You undead piece of shit! Did you kill him? Is that what happened? Did you attack Martin?”

The little voice telling him to control his temper was inaudible beneath the roaring wail of his own anger. He had no idea if this zombie really had hurt Martin, but it didn’t matter. It was close to the car and it was hungry and Benedict was angry. He didn’t care one bit about who the zombie had once been or if it would even hurt for it to die.

He charged at the zombie, axe held high in the air, but before he could swing, the zombie grabbed his arm. It was only a few inches away from the zombie’s mouth and a few stray droplets of blood sprayed forth, staining Benedict’s arm. He stumbled backward and the zombie tumbled on top of him, its face much _much_ too close. He gripped the zombie’s shoulders and attempted to push it away but its grasp was tight and certain, its mouth was gaping and its teeth were bared and—

_No, please. Not like this. Please, not like this. I don’t want to die like this. If Martin’s gone, there won’t be anyone to kill me. There won’t be anyone to save me from becoming one of them. Please—please—_

—there was a crowbar protruding from the back of its skull, and a familiar set of fingers wrapped around it with a ferocious, white-knuckled grasp. The zombie froze and Benedict shoved it aside in relief and anger. He sprang to his feet and stared at Martin, who was dislodging the crowbar and looking quite pleased with himself. Benedict thought that the sight of Martin dispatching an undead enemy in the nick of time would yield something like unbridled passion but his heart was pounding out of frustration and anger.

“Martin.” Benedict panted, grabbing him by the arm. “What the fucking _hell_ were you trying to do?”

“Give the zombies the element of surprise. You were doing such a good job picking them off in the back parking lot and I heard something in the front so I went around to see what it was and—” he paused and took a large gulp of air. “—there was one of them right by the car. So I killed it quick and then I saw a second one and I didn’t want to charge after it so I thought I’d play dead. Conceal myself with their blood so they couldn’t sniff me out and—”

“You can’t—Martin, you can’t sneak up on a zombie with a fucking crowbar. That’s fucking madness and it’s dangerous and—”

“So the way you do it is better, then? Getting right up in its face, running after it with an axe, and not leaving any room between you and the zombie?”

“My way,” Benedict bristled. “has kept us alive.”

“My way might _keep_ us alive. If we work _together_.”

“You could have gotten killed.”

“Ben, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but each of us stands an equal chance of getting killed. I’m not any more likely to be killed than you are – being armed doesn’t guarantee survival. It makes things easier, yeah, but a fucking zombie could blast through here right now and take us both out and that would be the end of everything.”

“Martin,” Benedict said, looking down. “Martin, your leg…”

They both looked down and noticed that bandage on Martin’s leg had peeled away through the torn leg of Martin’s pants, revealing his wound.

“You told me it was better,” Benedict said. “Martin, that doesn’t look _better_. At _all_. Is this why you didn’t want to get undressed in front of me?”

“I didn’t want you to see it,” Martin said quickly. “I didn’t want you to think you’d—you know—I thought you’d blame yourself because I fell off your motorcycle and because you were the one who patched it up and because you care way too fucking much about what I think of you.”

“Of course I’m going to blame myself,” Benedict whispered. “Aand I do _not_ care too much about what you think of me.”

“Yeah you do, mate. And not just now, either. It’s like you need my approval or something, like your choices are only as good as what I think of them and that’s—that’s fucking patently absurd, Ben.”

“Did you ever consider _why_ I care?” Benedict said.

“The same reason why I want to be a good zombie fighter, I suspect.”

They stood in silence for a moment and Benedict wondered just how many more times they weren’t going to say _I love you_. It would have been the perfect moment for Benedict to stride in Martin’s direction and kiss him like never before, but the poorly-healed abrasion on Martin’s leg gave him pause.

“You need—medical attention, probably. _Real_ medical attention. Something more than what I could give you. I’d feel better if somehow a doctor could look at your leg, I really would.”

“Well _I’d_ feel better if we weren’t in the middle of the fucking apocalypse getting attacked by zombies but—” Martin’s voice softened a little when he saw the hurt in Benedict’s eyes. “—but I don’t know where we’re going to find a doctor. Or anyone. Either people are dead or they’re hiding or they’re on the run, just like we are.”

“We could try to find that outpost,” Benedict said. “It’s a long shot – even the person who left that note isn’t sure if it exists. But it would give us something to aim for.”

“True.” Martin said. “We were heading east anyway. We might as well keep going that way.”

“We can’t stay here another night though,” Benedict said. “There are way too many corpses and it would be foolish to risk exposure. And the sooner we find someone to tend to your injury, the better."

Benedict notice something change in Martin’s eyes at the word _exposure_ ,  but he couldn’t quite place what it was.

“Also, I want to apologize,” Benedict said, stepping closer to Martin. “I didn’t mean to get angry at you before. I really didn’t.”

“I know you didn’t. You don’t need to apologize. I know it was foolish of me to do what I did but—I don’t know. You make it look so easy.”

“It was a hell of a kill,” Benedict said. “And I was scared. It felt good to be scared, for once. It’s not right to see dead bodies and zombies and nothing but violence and feel absolutely nothing.”

“You know,” Martin said, his face turning a bit devilish. “you owe me.”

“I owe you?” Benedict said, raising an eyebrow.

“I kind of saved your life a little, you have to admit.”

“True.” Benedict said, smiling a little. “That zombie was right on top of me.”

“Lucky zombie.”

“What do I owe you, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Martin said softly. “I can think of a few things.”

“I could kiss you like I did last night,” Benedict offered, assuming that the pitch change in Martin’s voice meant that the _things_ in question were of a sexual nature.

“Oh, we’ve done _that,_ ” Martin said, backing away a little and leaning against the hood of the car. “Kissing can’t be the _only_ thing you want to do.”

“What do you _think_ I want to do?” Benedict said as he started taking slow steps in Martin’s direction.

“I think you want me suck you off right here in the parking lot, that’s what I think.” Martin said, and just the _words alone_ made Benedict glad that he hadn’t taken his own _tight clothes all the time_ advice. Martin was giving him that _look_ again, that lustful _you just slaughtered a herd of zombies and you’re sweaty and your arms are flexing and you’re panting and I want you_ look. Benedict was more than aware of the two opposing courses of action he could take – he could pretend that Martin _I have wanted you from the very first moment I met you_ Freeman _wasn’t_ propositioning him in a parking lot filled with zombie corpses – or he could give in.

“You’re right,” Benedict said, leaning in and breathing his words against Martin’s neck. “Nothing would please me more than having my cock in your mouth. I bet you’re fucking good at it too, aren’t you? I know that filthy tongue of yours is good for more than just swearing.”

“I don’t know if I’m good,” Martin said, affecting a maddening mock-innocent tone. “I’ve never done it before. I’d need you to tell me _exactly_ how you like it.”

And like that, Benedict became the first man in history to get hard while covered in zombie blood.

“I’d like it if you started off slow,” Benedict said. He was as close to Martin as he could possibly be and yet he refused to let his lips touch Martin’s skin. “if you teased me a little.”

“Is that so?” Martin said. He played as if he’d been planning to kiss Benedict, but he pulled away just before their lips met.

“ _Achingly_ slow,” Benedict continued. “I’d want you to make me beg.”

“Keep going.”

Benedict shivered as he detected the low change in Martin’s voice – he’d gone from that endearing little whisper to something deep and downright _sexy_ – a rich, arousing tone that Benedict never dreamed he’d have the privilege of hearing.

“You’d want me to just _drag it out of you_ , huh?” Martin said. “Take it so slow that you’re practically clawing at me, moaning my name over and over again: _‘Oh, Martin, please let me come, please_ …’”

Since the uprising again, he’d always assumed that his death would be a zombie’s doing. But this – this mixture of post-kill adrenaline and _Martin_ talking absolute filth to him – seemed to be a far more likely culprit. Benedict’s heard was pounding in his chest and he was reasonably sure that he was harder than he’d ever been in his entire life.

“And then you’d go for it,” Benedict breathed. “you’d take all of me but you’d still go slow, running your tongue along the length of me as I slid in and out of your mouth and you’d groan and I’d feel it and—”

“Jesus fuck, don’t stop,” Martin said, and he closed his eyes. “Go on. Tell me.”

“You’d keep me right there on the edge. You’d _feel_ that I was close but you’d refuse to let me come. You’d keep moaning and I’d feel myself against the back of your throat and I’d pull on your hair whispering ‘ _Jesus fucking Christ, Martin, just let me come, I’m begging you’_ —and finally, you’d let me. And it would—you would—”

He was lost in his own mental images now: Martin sucking him greedily, fingernails digging into the side of Benedict’s thigh, the warm wetness of Martin’s mouth, the sensation of his own cock against the back of Martin’s throat. He was barely aware of the fact that, throughout this whole exchange of words, he and Martin hadn’t even touched.

“And—” Martin whispered as Benedict’s cheek grazed his, “—that’s all I wanted to know. Debt paid in full.”

“What?” Benedict asked.

“Well we can’t really _do_ certain things but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear about them. That was very _informational_.”

“You had no intention of— _fuck,_ ” Benedict said. “You—well played, Martin. Well played.”

“That’s what you get for criticizing my zombie killing methods,” Martin said with an agonizingly adorable smirk. “Maybe you’ll think twice before you judge what was a spectacularly executed zombie kill.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right, that was a pretty great kill. And if you do it again, I’ll kill _you_.”

Martin smirked and began walking back toward the store, but not before stooping down to pick up his crowbar. Benedict’s toes curled ever so slightly at the sight of Martin nearly on his knees.

“We should leave,” Benedict said. “Change our clothes, and leave. I don’t trust that there won’t be another wave of zombies headed this way. “

They headed back toward the store, and Benedict contemplated taking Martin’s hand. It was strange – he had no trouble telling Martin how he’d most like to be blown, but the tiniest intimate moments gave him pause.

“Ben,” Martin said. “There’s something I have to ask you and—I’m not really sure how.”

 _You know I’ll answer ‘yes’ to pretty much anything you say_ , Benedict thought.

“Well—I mean the zombie blood and—my leg and—I mean it’s an open wound and—what if some of it—I mean I don’t know how much zombie blood it would take to infect someone but—don’t make me say it, Ben. You know what I’m asking you, right?”

It was the first time Martin had ever asked something to which Benedict did not want to answer _yes_.


	7. Chapter 7

Their newly-acquired utility van rattled down the road, cutting through the bloodstained husks of what had once been known as suburbia. Such was the state of the world – little more than an abandoned movie set, used for its intended purpose and waiting patiently to be dismantled. It was easier for Benedict to think of it that way – once he started contemplating the inherent humanity in the painstakingly manicured lawns that would soon be overgrown or the thought of weary hands closing bulkhead doors as families retreated to safety below ground – the more his heart ached for what the world had been. It hurt less to pretend that he was driving through something he could someday leave behind.

Then, there was the matter of Martin, who was alternating between sitting on his hands and trying to look like he was ignoring his leg. He’d washed away the zombie blood before they left the sporting goods store but he still looked marked by it, twitching nervously and taking shallow breaths, a hairsbreadth away from crawling out of his skin.

“You know what would be useful?” Martin asked, licking his lips for what seemed like the thousandth time, “A map. I was never one for GPS before this happened but I wouldn’t mind it now.”

Benedict sighed. He’d always considered frustration to be among the most pointless of emotions but he was willing to concede that perhaps, in this moment, it was warranted. He only wanted to hear Martin’s voice if it came with the guarantee that he’d be hearing it forever, that it wouldn’t suddenly give way to the disgusting undead growl that served as their post-apocalyptic soundtrack. Benedict _didn’t know what was going to happen_ , and not knowing felt like it was going to kill him.

“It’s easy to ‘never be one for GPS’ when you’re _never the one driving_. And I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to distract me, get me to not think about you becoming a zombie.  An admirable effort, I’ll give you that, but it’s not going to work. The thing is, Martin, I’m worried. I’m worried and I’m nervous and when I get like that—”

“—you develop a complete and utter inability to stop fucking _talking_.”

“Well—yes. But it’s going to take a lot more than idle chitchat about navigation systems to get me to stop thinking about what may or may not be wrong with you.”

“I can offer some suggestions.” Martin said teasingly.

“The last time you talked to me like that I ended up with the worst hard-on of my life and nothing to do with it. So keep that dirty talk in your pants. In your head. I mean—just don’t say any words, okay?”

Martin punctuated his innocent little nod with a wink.

“Why are you turning here?” Martin asked.

“Because I’ve got somewhat of a plan. It might not be a very good one, but it’s something.”

“Do tell.”

“It involves finding a hospital. Luckily, we haven’t reached the point in our apocalypse when the road signs are damaged beyond repair, and I happened to notice a sign back there with a large blue H on it and an arrow pointing in this direction. I figure it’s only a matter of time before we find it.”

“A hospital, huh? I seem to recall a certain handsome zombie-fighter telling me something about how—”

Benedict’s deflected Martin’s flirty praise with a huff and an eye-roll. This has _also_ been needling at him – saucy little comments and verbal blowjobs (quite literally _oral sex_ ) and that lustful daze that slapped Martin across the face whenever Benedict did anything that could possibly be regarded as even vaguely arousing. He’d attempted to make an inventory of any similar behavior that had transpired between the two of them before they’d admitted their feelings for one another but he hadn’t been able to settle on a defining moment that said _yes, Benedict, he’s always felt this way about you_. Martin’s advances still felt a little too fresh and new and tentative to be indicative of any long-standing attraction. __

“All right. Stop it right there. Martin, I need a straight answer from you, in a manner of speaking. Because one minute you’re saying ‘Oh, you don’t need to pay for dinner, Benedict. It’s not a date’ to trying to make me come in my pants in a parking lot and calling me _handsome_ and—look, I know how I feel about you and you know how you feel about me and I know you said something about how I ‘took you by surprise’ or that it’s ‘always been me’ or whatever but— _I want you to tell me_. Seriously, it’s just you and me right now and I’m sick of wondering how you feel, because clearly you feel _something_ and I’m kind of getting tired of falling victim to your—sexual _whims_.”

“Sexual whims,” Martin repeated. “I see.”

Benedict took his eyes off the road for a moment and looked at Martin, hoping that Martin’s face was saying something that his mouth wasn’t. He looked like his words were about to boil over, and they did.

“You want to know?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“You might have realized how you felt right away, but it took me a little longer. I didn’t know _what_ I was feeling. You’d show up on set and everything would change. I couldn’t wait to see you and I—I’d get this sinking feeling in my chest but it was good, somehow. And I went from being scared of feeling it to being scared that it would go away. Then you split up with Olivia and moved on and I remember feeling this sort of jealousy like I hadn’t felt since fucking _primary school_. And I couldn’t figure out—I mean, it made no sense to me. I was—I _am_ a happily married man and there was no reason on earth why I should be envious of anyone who had the chance to—have you.

“Then it hit me. you were just standing there, listening to something on your iPod, wearing sunglasses and you were just— _you_. You weren’t goofing off for the cameras or imitating anyone or doing much of anything at all and I thought to myself, ‘I think I might be in love with him.’ Let me tell you, when I realized what was going on, I felt like every thought I’d ever had about you was written all over me, like you could see everything I was feeling and there was nothing I could do to hold any of it in. And the worst part was, I didn’t want to _stop_ being in love with you. Because it felt nice, it really did. It was strange and terrifying and _so good_ and I didn’t want it to go away and I damn well didn’t want you to know. But thing are different now and if I am going to die or turn into a zombie or whatever, I just—I don’t want it to happen without you knowing that. Okay. There’s your _sexual whim_ , Ben.”

Benedict turned another corner and concentrated on the road, mapping out a mental portrait of everything Martin had mentioned. It was hazy, like he was trying to grab on to the final wisps of a fast-departing dream, but he did remember the moment Martin mentioned. He hadn’t even noticed Martin’s eyes on him that day, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps everything would have been different if he had.

“Maybe it was easy for you,” Martin continued, and his voice was slightly softer. “Maybe you knew things about yourself before I knew things about myself and maybe this isn’t as big of a deal as I am making it out to be and maybe these are things I should have sorted out before I—before I kissed you that first time. I hate that you think I don’t mean any of it or that it’s all a whim or something because—I wouldn’t just—it’s not something I’d just do casually, all right? It took a lot for me to be able to admit that yes, I’m not entirely—I’m saying so many things right now, I’m sorry.”

“It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know,” Benedict said. “But I’m glad you told me. About everything.”

Martin managed a weak smile, and leaned against the window.

“Do you really think I am going to die?” he asked. “Or—I suppose you don’t _die_ , but become one of them?”

“I don’t know.”

He hated saying it, but there was absolutely no point in lying.

“But I do think,” Benedict continued, “that given your current predicament, finding a hospital wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

“What makes you think there are still going to be doctors at the hospital? ‘Oh, I probably should take shelter somewhere that isn’t infested with zombies but I’ve got a patient coming in this afternoon so I suppose I’d better stay put until he shows up.’”

“Martin, you know I’m absolutely smitten with you, but you’re not always the best company on long car trips.”

He turned yet another corner. He could see a large, rounded building with wide glass windows. Even from several yards away, he could see that the parking lot was filled with cars.

“Ah, wonderful. Now remember, there might be zombies and there might not be zombies.”

“Benedict Cumberbatch: Your Tour Guide for the Zombie Apocalypse.”

“Don’t make me turn this car around.” Benedict said, hating that he could still love Martin so much even when he was being an unbelievable pain in his arse. “What I’m saying is that if the entire area is clear, that probably means that the zombies escaped and have spread out over the course of the past few days – which in _turn_ means that we have no idea where they are, or where they will be, so even if we don’t _see_ any zombies, it would be wise for us to pretend as if there _are_ zombies, and act accordingly.”

“And if there are zombies?”

“If there are zombies, we’ll destroy them.” Benedict said. He paused for a moment and turned that sentence over in his head a few times. It seemed like ages had passed between the time when that sentence wouldn’t have made a lick of sense, and the time when it represented the precariously redrawn line between life and death.

Benedict parked the van near a line of ambulances, and stepped out into the parking lot. He could hear _something_ in the distance – something like a flat, dull pounding.

“Crowbar ready?” Benedict asked.

“Mmm. Axe ready?”

“You know it.”

They left the van behind and headed toward the large glass doors. The small atrium and admitting area was empty and barely illuminated by flickering fluorescent lighting.

“There’s—the power’s still sort of on.” Martin said quietly, as if even acknowledging the low hum of light would cause it to shut down out of spite.

“The hospital must run on a backup generator. I don’t know when they officially lost power but since it’s been a few days since all of this began, there might not be much time left. We’ll be quick, Martin. I don’t want to get trapped here in the dark any more than you do.”

The pounding was slightly louder, although he couldn’t quite place the location of the sound. It was barely audible and yet it was all he could hear.

“I’m not even going to ask whether or not you can hear that because I don’t know how you _couldn’t_.” Martin said.

“If I had to guess,” Benedict said. “zombies.”

“In the hospital?”

They continued down the hallway, weapons at the ready.

“Yes,” Benedict said quietly. “I’m also going to guess that it’s not overrun, but it’s probably not free of them either. And, like the others, I don’t think it would be incorrect to assume that these zombies are going to be very hungry.”

“Why don’t they just eat each other?” Martin huffed.

“They must not be drawn to infected flesh.” Benedict said. “They can probably sniff out the difference between a human who is infected with the virus and a human who isn’t.”

“I guess if they don’t attack me, then we’ll know.”

“Shut up.”

They passed by row after row of abandoned beds. Some of the sheets were torn and streaked with dried blood.

“No blood spatter,” Benedict said. “which means that whatever was wrong with these people was wrong before they got to the hospital. They came here bleeding.”

“Well-cast, you were. Bloody Sherlock Holmes of zombies,” Martin said dramatically. “‘Consulting epidemiologist. The only one in the world. Literally, since everyone else is dead.”

Benedict held back a laugh and thought about saying “We can’t giggle; it’s the apocalypse,” but by the time he’d decided it would have been a humorous addition to the conversation, the moment had passed.

“Where do we go now?” Martin asked.

“I’m not sure.” Benedict said. “I was hoping that there would still be someone here. You know, maybe a few doctors who’d stayed behind to help patients or something. Some sort of—I don’t know, makeshift infirmary. I don’t trust the quiet.” After he finished speaking, he realized that he was talking about more than just the quiet of the hospital.

“Someone’s still here,” Martin said, nodding upward.

“Yeah, but I’m guessing it’s not someone who can help us.”

“We could check hospital records.” Martin said.

“That’s—a rather good idea, actually. If there are zombies here, they probably started out as patients. There’s got to be some sort of paperwork lying around somewhere. All right, think. The virus is usually transmitted through biting.” Benedict said, walking toward the nearest hospital bed and leafing through a folder filled with papers. “And anyone with a strange bite would probably go right to the emergency room, which is where we are. Martin, go through some of the other folders and see if you can find anyone who was admitted after being bitten.”

“All right.”

For a few moments, the only sounds in the entire hospital were the methodic shuffling of papers and the mysterious metallic clang above them.

“Found one.” Martin said. “‘Patient admitted with large, discolored wound on right arm. Persistent fever, resulting in rage and agitation. Quarantined.’ Sounds like zombies to me.”

“This one says almost the exact same thing.” said Benedict from across the room. “Right down to quaran—” He was interrupted by a loud sound from the floor above them.

Everything Benedict knew about zombies had been gleaned from films he’d watched and his innate ability to think on his feet. His brand of quick-thinking served him well at the end of the world, but he’d always managed to keep the reality of the situation tucked away. It was a wound, suffocated by layer after layer of gauze, maddeningly determined to bleed through. He could see the bandages coming apart as he began to speak:

 “—Martin?” Benedict asked. “If you had to quarantine a zombie, or multiple zombies, how would you do it?”

“How would _I_ do it? Fuck, I don’t know. No one’s ever asked me that before. Probably—I mean, it would seem that the general idea would be to get all the zombies into one area and make sure they can’t get out. Isn’t that how quarantining works?”

Benedict ran his fingers along the edge of the manila folder and stared down at the streaks of dried blood on the crisp white hospital sheets.

“Doesn’t it seem weird to you, Martin, that we haven’t really seen anyone? That the entire hospital is a bloody mess— _literally_ bloody—but there’s no one here?”

“Well yeah, but it’s the apocalypse,” Martin said casually, as if Benedict had asked him for the time. “That’s what happens during the apocalypse. People die. Or they’re hiding out in zombie-proof bunkers or something, I don’t know.”

“Yes, but—what I’m getting at is that everything’s been quiet. Too quiet. We keep thinking that this happened suddenly, but what if it didn’t? What if it had been going on for a while? People started coming in, saying some stranger on the street ran up and bit them. They’d look crazy, right? They’d treat the bite, but—but zombie bites clearly don’t heal the way an ordinary bite would and—” Benedict trailed off.

“Ben, I know _you_ know what you’re talking about, at least I hope you do, but you might want to do me a favor and explain it to me because I’m lost over here.”

“I think we’ll find the rest of the records upstairs,” Benedict said absently. “and I think once we find them, we’ll find—I don’t think the zombies are going to—look, just follow me. I have an idea.”

“All right, then. I’ll just follow you into the unknown because you think it’s a good idea. Good strategy, Cumberbatch.” Martin muttered.

They walked to the end of the hallway and pushed open the large double-doors, revealing a wide stairwell.

“My leg does not approve.” Martin said.

“Your leg doesn’t have a choice, unless you’d like to get in the elevator and run the risk that the generator cuts out as you and your leg are riding it to the next floor.”

“Fine.”

They walked up stairs and the sound grew louder, echoing against the wide cylindrical expanse above them.

“What if it’s just—nothing but zombies up there?”

“It probably is.”

“Benedict Cumberbatch, I am not going to die like this.”

Benedict slammed his hand against a metal panel and with a soft whir, the automated door-opening mechanism kicked in. A painstakingly slow-forming circle of light illuminated the scuffed and bloodied linoleum. With his free hand, Benedict grabbed Martin’s wrist and led him inside.

There was a large crescent-shaped desk below a sign marked _ADMISSION_ , a series of private rooms and a wide arcing hallway between them. Aside from what looked like the standard post-apocalyptic wear and tear, it looked as if the entire floor had been abandoned mid-shift. There was no obvious sign of struggle or distress. He and Martin took a few more steps into what looked like a completely empty admitting area.

The doors to the private rooms were closed and barred shut, but the long panes of glass afforded Benedict and Martin a gruesome view of what lay behind them. As expected, there was a fresh wet gleam of blood against the glass, but there were also dried, crusty streaks that gave testimony to just how long the horde of zombies had been contained. They were stretching and writhing against the glass, teeth bared at the sight and scent of warm flesh that taunted them, out of the reach of their ravenous grasp.

“What have they done?” Martin asked, taking a bold step toward the nearest room and pressed his hand against the glass. “Look, some of them are—are they—their hands, Ben. Their hands are bound and—that one’s been blindfolded. Benedict, what the fuck is going on?”

But Benedict was busying himself at the desk, flipping through file after file, until he found a thick manila folder marked with a hot pink Post-It note:

_ATTN: The cases we discussed. URGENT._

“Martin, I think I might have found something.” Benedict said. He flipped open the folder and began leafing through the series of white and pink and yellow papers:

  *  _Patient arrived with a large, discolored wound on her right arm._
  * _Within one hour of admittance, developed a fever and began vomiting._
  * _Loss of limb function._
  * _Decrease in heart rate._
  * _Slipped into comatose state._



“She was pronounced dead at either—3:15 or 3:18 AM. The handwriting is difficult to read,” Benedict said, looking up from the paper. “An hour later, she was reanimated.  I don’t know if she was the first one they saw – there may have been more – but I think this is when they realized there was a pattern and started keeping track.”

Martin stayed silent as he watched the undead, trapped and helpless, stare at him with wide, empty eyes.

“This _did_ start small.” Benedict continued. “Everything was right in front of them—all the signs and symptoms. _Everything_. But who would see all of this and think _zombies_ , you know?”

“I certainly wouldn’t.”

“Or they thought of zombies, maybe, but zombies aren’t _real_ so they didn’t take it seriously. People slipped into comas, started dying. It probably seemed strange to them at first, all these people coming in with infected bites and fevers. But by the time they started putting the pieces together, by the time they realized that this was an epidemic—”

“—it was too late,” Martin said. ”The damage had been done.”

“The patients thought they were coming here to get help.” Benedict said, eyes still glued to the files in his hands. “It was—almost a trap. They were just herded into the hospital rooms and left there. The doctors didn’t know what else to do. They couldn’t cure it. They certainly didn’t want to risk exposure so they said ‘oh just wait here, we’ll take care of you’—but the patients were bound and blindfolded and led in here to die.

“I know the zombies are supposed to be monsters,” Martin said. “I know I’m supposed to be scared and I’m supposed to just kill them but—I feel bad for them. I can’t help it. I feel bad for what’s been done to them.”

 “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that there isn’t a cure. Even if they were aware of the zombie virus and had some sort of antidote in development, there wouldn’t have been enough time to test it and approve it or anything like that. But judging by all of this, it doesn’t seem like people were aware at all. And according to this,” Benedict added, ‘it takes about a day for the virus to run its course and for, um, ‘zombification’, for lack of a better word, to set in. Now, you’re not having any of these symptoms, are you?”

“Er,” Martin said, “not until you mentioned them.”

“A touch of hypochondria, huh?” Benedict grinned. “You’re fine. If you were infected, you would have a fever by now. You’re okay, Martin. You’re going to be okay.”

Martin nodded, but he didn’t look entirely convinced.

“I’m going to take these files with me,” Benedict said. “If we do find that outpost, or anyone who can help us, these might be useful. They offer a pretty good timeline of the progression of symptoms.”

“Why do you think this happened?” Martin asked, stepping away from the window. “Why now? I mean, you can’t help but wonder why the world would end like this.”

“Sometimes I don’t feel like it’s really over,” Benedict said. “like it’s just—restarting, or something. Does that make any sense?”

“Remember how the radio said that this was—what did they call it—Class Four?” Martin asked. “Do you think that the entire world is like this? People hiding. People on the run, like us. Zombies trapped in hospital rooms.”

“You’re asking me about Amanda and the kids, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t pretend to know exactly what’s going on everywhere else,” Benedict said. “If this really is a global pandemic, the entire world could very well be a lot like this. But we’re safe – I’m sure there are others who are safe too.”

Benedict sat at the desk in a cushy black office chair and idly tapped his fingers against his thigh. It was strange to be so close to such a large number of zombies, although he was no longer surprised at the rush of adrenaline that accompanied their dangerous proximity. Martin took another look at the squirming, desperate horde and walked away. He sat on the edge of the desk, facing Benedict.

“What do we do?” Martin asked.

“About?”

“About them,” Martin said. “Do we leave them like this?”

“I don’t know,” Benedict said. “Even if they break free of their bindings, they’d have to punch their way through the glass. Eventually it might crack, but—it would take a while for them to wear it down.”

“So we’re going to leave them in some zombie hospital prison?”

“What’s the alternative? Set them free? It’s not like they’re reaching for us because they want to be friends, Martin. They want to kill us. They don’t know anything else. Or are you suggesting that—that we kill _them_.”

“I know we can’t set them free. I’m not stupid. But now that we know they’re here, it feels wrong to leave them. I feel bad for them.” Martin said. “They don’t deserve this.”

“It’s not about deserving or not deserving. It’s a horrible thing, what happened to them. But they don’t have any basis for comparison anymore. They don’t remember who they were.”

“I can’t wrap my mind around that, I just can’t. How can you not know? How can a stupid virus make you forget everything about yourself? What did humanity do that was so bad that we ended up with this?”

“Horrible things happen.” Benedict shrugged.

“You’re scaring me, Ben.” Martin said, shaking his head. “You’re too good at this. You’re too good at just _forgetting that they were humans_. You act like you know exactly what’s going on, like you’ve got everything under control but you know shit-all, same as everyone else.”

“Is this the part where you apologize because you realize that you’re being a complete and utter dick?” Benedict asked placidly.

“Do you even remember what you said?” Martin asked. “I know it was only just this morning, but I’ll refresh your memory: you said that the attachment is what separates us from them. That the moment we stop feeling anything is the moment we lose _our_ humanity, and then we’re absolutely no better than they are. You know, you’ve got me spewing my feelings for you all over the place, telling you exactly where I was when I fucking realized I was in love with you and you’re sitting there like you’re doing your best Sherlock Holmes impression.”

“You want to talk about hiding feelings?” Benedict said, looking up at Martin. “Welcome to the past few years of my life. Do you have any idea what it was like to go to work every single day and see you and know that I stood absolutely _no chance_ with you for more reasons than I can even begin to count? Then I’d go home and at first Olivia would be patient but then after a while she started snapping at me for acting distant and she wanted to know ‘who the other person was’ because she wasn’t stupid, Martin, she knew what was going on – or _wasn’t_ going on, I should say. And we all saw how that ended up. So you might have had your sweet little movie moment where time stopped and birds sang but I lost someone I loved because I couldn’t _stop feeling anything for you_. So yes, Martin, I am good at this. Because whenever I say how I feel, people get hurt.”

A zombie let out a particularly loud bellow. Benedict was inclined to sneer, but Martin could help but laugh, which softened Benedict’s response.

“You have to admit that was funny.” Martin said.

“I’m trying to be sad!” Benedict said, but he was chuckling in spite of himself.

“I’m sorry I said everything I said.”

“I’m sorry I called you a dick.”

“Kiss and make up?” Martin asked.

“Did you pick a fight with me just so I’d—?”

But Benedict was interrupted by a kiss and he accepted it, wrapping his arms around Martin’s waist, trying not to think about low zombie grunts and guilt and focusing only on the urgent slide of Martin’s tongue against his own. It was a good kiss – not one of those messy _I need you right now_ kisses that make his toes curl – just a kiss that asked nothing of him, other than the hope that it would be returned.

“Benedict, can I say something?”

“You don’t usually ask.”

“True. I guess I’ll just say it?”

“Go on, then.”

“I love you.”

He’d heard these words so many times, but not from Martin’s lips. They’d been there on the first night when Martin had trusted Benedict enough to let him lead the way and every moment since. Benedict eased his fingers through Martin’s hair in slow, lazy strokes.

“I love you too.”

They kissed again, and Benedict was so deeply immersed in it that he managed to avoid hearing two sounds, existing independently of one another and yet still twined together – the sharp snap of gunfire in the distance, and the thin, icy crack of glass.


	8. Chapter 8

When Benedict and Martin had kissed for the first time, it was, in Benedict’s mind, like sticking his tongue down the throat of every fantasy he’d ever had. There was so much weight behind each kiss, like he couldn’t let go of the idea that Martin was real and perfect and in his arms and, above all else, kissing him back. They were kisses about pent-up bits of his past, and they made him think about the times he'd watch as Martin absent-mindedly stroked his lips like he had absolutely no clue that it was the most arousing thing Benedict had ever seen, or every time Martin would stretch his arms and crack his neck and let out a moan that Benedict would make an effort to remember for _later_.

Then, there were kisses about the present, gorgeous and ephemeral and _holy shit we’re finally doing this and your hands are actually all over me and you want this just as much as I do and you’re here and you’re not mine forever but you’re mine right now and I never ever want to stop kissing you_.

These kisses, the hospital kisses, were easy and passionate and fucking _gorgeous_. They were about the future; or “future” in its present redefinition: the sprawling expanse of time that had been gutted in order to hold the post-apocalyptic wreckage. The kisses were no longer exploratory – he anticipated Martin’s (slightly aggressive, slightly messy, slightly the biggest turn-on of his entire life) technique and he reveled in it. But now, their kisses were like their van chugging down the highway – headed east to what might as well be nowhere. It wasn’t that he was _dissatisfied_ with the kisses, or how Martin was palming inexpertly but eagerly at Benedict’s trousers because _he was making out with Martin Freeman_ , after all. And it wasn’t like he had a clear idea of what he wanted, either – his fantasies were always about a relationship in progress – fucking on the couch while watching a bad movie together; a stealthy hand job beneath the table at the BAFTAs which would leave them looking so guilty their red carpet photos would resemble mug shots; waking up in Martin’s arms on a lazy Saturday morning and having slow, comfortable _I don’t even care about your morning breath_ sex. He’d even imagined silly things – pretending not to like watching repeats of _Antiques Roadshow_ or tagging along as Martin spent an entire god-damn afternoon shopping for records. But despite all of that, he’d never really imagined a _first time_.

And if he had, it definitely wouldn’t have taken place during a zombie uprising.

But the idea was growing on him.

“Why did you stop?” Benedict asked, running his tongue over his own freshly-kissed lips.

“Thought I heard something.” Martin said.

“You’re hallucinating. Kiss me again.”

They slid to the floor and Martin’s legs spread across Benedict’s hips. He grasped Benedict’s wrists and pinned them to the tiles.

“Love it when you do that.” Benedict murmured, closing his eyes and focusing on the pressure of Martin’s fingers and the sweat on his palms.

“Hold you down, you mean?” Martin answered, and there was a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Mmm.”

“So you’d probably like it if I—” Martin leaned down, sucked on Benedict’s neck and pressed harder on his wrists, digging his nails in just enough to make Benedict elicit a soft, surprised moan.

“Fuck, the things I’d let you to do me.”

Benedict was preparing to elaborate (even though Martin was nuzzling against the mark he’d left on Benedict’s neck which was just about the most pleasurable distraction imaginable) when there was another faint, straining creak across the room.

“Definitely heard that.” Benedict said, begrudgingly pushing Martin away.

Martin peeked over the edge of the desk.

“They’re—no, oh god,” Martin said, jumping backward. “Get the fuck up right now.”

“What?” Benedict said.

“The glass. It’s cracking. Ben, they’re going to get out.”

“Of course they are. Martin, it’s like you’re on this one-man mission to get me hard as all fucking hell and then—”

“You can compliment my boner-giving abilities later. We have to get out of here.”

Benedict sat up and slapped his hand on the desk, fumbling for the handle of his axe.

“Please tell me that somewhere between your masterful assessment of the zombie plague and our impromptu make-out session, you were coming up with some brilliant escape plan.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about zombies while you were on top of me,” Benedict said, standing up and readjusting his jeans. “How thick is the glass? Did you notice while you were over there before?”

“It’s—fuck, Benedict, I didn’t take measurements! It’s thick! I don’t know! Somewhere between a windowpane and that _aquarium_ type glass.”

“Aquarium glass, Martin?” Benedict asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Maybe thicker. If I’m being perfectly honest with you, my mind wasn’t really on the thickness of the _glass_ , okay?”

Benedict snorted.

“It _is_ cracking, though,” Benedict said. “Is there anything we can use to secure the main doors?”

“They open inward, so it’s not like we can barricade them from the outside.” Martin said.

“Unless,” Benedict said, “we block them from the inside, and find another way out. Start piling anything you can lift against the door, okay? Zombies can be strong, but they can’t really _think_. They’ll know it’s a barricade, but they won’t know that they can knock it down. If you stack enough large, heavy against the door, that should hold them off. I’ll be right down the hallway, figuring out an escape. If I come back here and you’re lying there in a pool of zombie blood with a fucking crowbar in your hand, playing possum again, I am actually going to murder you.”

“Duly noted. And hey, Ben?”

“Mmm?”

“If your plan to get us out of here is in any way related to jumping off this fucking roof, I’d just like to point out that despite our previous lives as actors, show business has been effectively obliterated, there are no longer television programs, you are not _in_ a television program, you are _not_ Sherlock Holmes—”

Benedict was already halfway down the hallway but he swore he heard Martin yell “This is not Reichenbach!” as he attempted to push a large wooden credenza across the floor.

Benedict ran past room after room of trapped zombies and felt that same moderate wave of pity but fought against it – now was not the time to feel sympathy for the undead.

“Closet, closet, closet…” he said to himself, opening a wooden door at the far end of the hallway with a cool _click_. Inside were rows and rows of shelves stocked with bottled of pills and sealed packets of gauze and tubes of ointment.

“Perfect.”

He left the closet door ajar and continued along the edge of the hallway. The windows in the main waiting room had been of the permanently-sealed variety but the windows in the far corridor were older, and could be cranked open. Despite Martin’s objections, jumping out the window wouldn’t be the worst plan, although the drop _was_ a bit high – even for the second floor.

“Martin!” Benedict called down the hallway. “When you’re done over there, dig through the desk and find a permanent marker, all right? And don’t forget to check and see if there are any other doors that need securing. Lock down everything. And don’t forget your crowbar!”

“Okay?” Martin said, evidently intrigued and confused by Benedict’s demands.

Benedict opened the window. He leaned out and could see their van, still parked in front of the emergency entrance. It was quite a distance away but the surrounding parking lot was clear of zombies. He could still hear the horde of the undead pounding against the glass, layered beneath the sound of footsteps as Martin sprinted down the hall.

“Here’s your maker. Area’s been sealed. And there’s about a three-foot diagonal crack in the glass and that fucker’s about to come down. I hope you know what you’re—Benedict, what did I tell you about jumping?”

“We’re not jumping _off_ the hospital—we’re jumping _out of_ the hospital. It’s fine. We’re on the second floor, Martin!” Benedict said. 

“It’s still a bit high,” Martin said. “Especially with my leg.”

“Martin, you’ve stabbed zombies in the eye with a crowbar,” Benedict said, briefly glancing at Martin’s hands to make sure he hadn’t left it behind. “You’ve camouflaged yourself so you could do a pretty amazing sneak-attack on a zombie. And you saved my life in the process. And you’re telling me that you can’t jump out of a second-floor window? _Martin_.”

Martin pressed his palms to the windowsill and looked down.

“If I break a god-damn limb I’m never doing anything with you again. No kisses, no— _nothing._ Do you hear me?”

Benedict leaned against Martin and bit his earlobe.

“You’re fine. Jump.”

Martin tossed his crowbar to the ground.

 “Wait, how do we close the window behind us?” he asked. “Even you’re not tall enough to reach it.”

“Leave it to me.” Benedict said.

Martin opened the window a bit wider, gripped the windowsill and slowly lowered himself until he was clinging to the edge and his legs were dangling against the exterior building.

“Would you kill me if I laughed at you right now?” Benedict said, cupping his hand over his mouth and trying his damndest to keep from chuckling at the sight of Martin holding on for dear life.

“Yes!” he said as he let go of the windowsill. He landed with a thud but when Benedict looked down to survey the potential damage, he was relieved to see that Martin had emerged from his plummet unscathed.

“All right, now if you value your life at all, you will step out of the way because I’m about to toss an axe out the window.” Martin darted about eight feet to the left, just before Benedict’s axe came spiraling down. Benedict followed, and his landing was about as awkward as Martin’s, but he too remained unharmed by the fall. They each retrieved their respective weapons and ran.

“Marker!” Benedict said, reaching out his hand as they dashed across the parking lot.

“Here,” Martin said. He fumbled through his back pocket and produced a thick, chisel-tipped black Sharpie. “No idea why you need it but I’ve kind of learned not to ask questions.”

“Car keys. Here, start the van. And take my axe as well. I’ll be over in about ten seconds.”

He handed the keys to Martin, gave him a meaningful nod that was supposed to imply some sort of shared knowledge but was met only with confusion, and ran toward the main hospital entrance. He removed the cap and in large letters, he wrote:

_ ZOMBIES INSIDE. _

_ DO NOT ENTER. _

It was a crude warning, and there was no guarantee that future scavengers would heed it. After capping the marker and making a hasty retreat to the van, he realized that he’d written it mostly to assuage his own guilt at unintentionally taunting the zombies, prompting them to break down the glass. Although he did not know for sure, he was bogged down with the feeling that there’d be blood on his hands as a result of their sojourn at the hospital.

“I’ve got this.” Benedict said as he slammed the van door and started driving. He pulled up below to the still-open window.

“Ben, is there any point in asking what the hell you think you’re doing?”

Benedict grinned, mostly for Martin’s benefit but also because the adrenaline was kicking and _oh, this felt good._ Protecting Martin and outsmarting the undead were fast becoming his two most sought-after vices. He reached into the rear seat and grabbed his backpack.

“I’ll be _right back_.”

“No axe?” Martin called after him.

“Won’t need it!”

Benedict exited the van, heaved himself up onto the hood and, with one long-legged stride, he stepped onto the roof. The metal gave slightly beneath his weight but he remained steady as he pushed himself through the window and rolled onto the floor. Somewhere between their first escape and Benedict’s dramatic reentry, the glass had broken and a bloodied mass of zombies was pouring forth from the gaping, shattered mess that had once served as a window. Their limbs were still bound and some were writhing on the ground, grunting and groaning in misery.

_ Come on, Ben _ , he thought to himself. _You know what you have to do_.

He slipped toward the closet, unzipped his backpack and began loading it with as many medical supplies as it could hold. He half-wished he could take everything but it wouldn’t be realistic, nor would it be fair to any other desperate and ailing travelers who might happen on such a fortuitous stash. He remembers Martin’s careful reconstruction of Benedict’s own words: _Th_ _ e moment we stop feeling anything is the moment we lose  _ _ our _ _ humanity, and then we’re absolutely no better than they are _ . There was no humanity in willingly taken from those who may find themselves in need.

He stared down the hallway at the stumbling, staggering parade of zombies. They gasped and strained against their bindings, twitching as their wounds reopened and bled afresh against the floor.  Their impeded movement gave Benedict more than enough time to slam the closet door, push himself out the window,  close it (while standing atop the van) and jump from the hood of the car to the ground.

 “I have never wanted you more,” Martin said as Benedict entered the van. “Seriously, if I wasn’t already—fucking Christ.”

“Here,” Benedict said, tossing his backpack onto Martin’s lap. “Medicine, gauze, disinfectant—I don’t know how much good it will be now but I want you to have it. Just for peace of mind because I know you’re worried.”

“I love you too.”

“Is this going to be something we say now?” Benedict asked, holding back a grin.

“It can be, if you want. Also, is this east? Are we still going east?” Martin asked as Benedict drove out of the hospital parking lot and turned onto the road.

“Fuck, I don’t—I think? Where’s a compass when you need one?”

“You know, they probably had loads of compasses at that sporting goods store. Kind of a pity we didn’t pick one up.”

“Yeah, Martin, where was that idea this morning, huh? I’m pretty sure this is still east, though. Once we get on the highway again, we’ll sort it out.”

Martin began tearing into the supplies and redressing his wound. Benedict sneaked a glance at it and while it appeared to be healing rather slowly (and he had to admit that the sight of Martin in pain made his chest ache in hopeless sympathy), it did not seem to be devastatingly infected, at least in Benedict’s admittedly inexperienced eyes.

“Do you think the zombies will get through the windows?” Martin asked as he finished taping the gauze to his leg.

“They might. The outer windows are considerably thicker though, and if they can’t see any prey, they might not try as hard to break down the glass. I think part of the problem before was that they saw us right there. But I mean, eventually things will break down. Trapping the zombies in the hospital was a temporary fix for a much larger problem. There was no way they were going to be able to stay there forever without escaping somehow.”

“So they’re someone else’s problem now.” Martin said. “We made an absolute fucking mess of things back there, didn’t we?”

“I don’t think so. We’ve got information about the virus and medicine and—and we, you know, said that we love each other. If you’re going to start feeling guilty again, don’t. The zombies were never our problem. They’re the world’s problem. You saw those files—this is way, _way_ bigger than we are.”

“I—am—so—hungry.” Martin said, reaching into the backseat and rummaging through the supplies for something to eat. “I desperately need a proper meal. Do you think there’s any way that can happen?”

“Depends on what you mean by a proper meal. I think the days of fine dining are behind us but I don’t see why we couldn’t do the old breaking-and-entering routine again and, you know, help ourselves.”

Martin mumbled something that sounded more like a half-masticated mess of trail mix than a sentence, but it was accompanied by an affirmative nod, which Benedict interpreted as _yes, that sounds all right._

“Youwannanything?” Martin said, tipping the packet of trail mix in Benedict’s direction. Benedict shook his head.

“I’ll have something in a bit. What I _really_ want is a cigarette.”

“Ah,” Martin said. “I bet you’d give anything for a pack of Marlboro Lights right now.”

“Don’t say ‘Marlboro Lights’ unless you’re prepared to stick one in my mouth.” Benedict said, and the part of his mind that was reserved for delighting at innuendos revved up at the sound of the words _stick one in my mouth_.

“Well, as it turns out, I _also_ may or may not have swiped something from the hospital.” Martin said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an almost-full pack of cigarettes. Benedict nearly drove off the road. “I bet you’d give _anything_ for one of these cigarettes.”

“‘Give anything’—Martin, what is this, _prison_? What am I supposed to trade for them, exactly?”

 Martin laughed and tossed the cigarettes onto Benedict’s lap. He perched his knees against the steering wheel so he could use his hands to yank a cigarette from the pack.

“They just happened to be in the desk, along with that permanent marker,” Martin said. “I couldn’t help but notice that you were running low. You’d think someone who works in a hospital would know the health risks that come with smoking.”

“Mmm, health risks,” Benedict said, rolling down the window and exhaling a deep plume of smoke. “Thank you, by the way. I’m definitely going to enjoy this.”

“You’re smoking it already? I didn’t even see you light that fucking thing. You must have been desperate.”

“You have no idea.”

They drove in silence – Martin ate and Benedict smoked (indulging in two cigarettes, fuck rationing them) and it was stupidly enjoyable, considering the circumstances.

“This exit looks promising.” Benedict said after he tossed the remainder of the second cigarette out of the window.

“Mmmmph?”

“Were you _asleep_? No wonder why it was so quiet.”

“It’s been a long d—week, really. I’m exhausted.”

“As am I.”

“I feel like we’ve been living like this for a decade,” Martin said. “Do you even remember what life was like before?”

“Yes,” Benedict said. “I do. It was nice and I liked it. But there was a lot less of you in it.”

“Oh, so life was great before you and I started with all this ‘I love you’ business?” Martin said, almost testily.

“Come on, Martin. Now you’re just being obstinate on purpose. You know that I was crazy about you so don’t even start.”

“I know, I know. I’m just giving you a hard time. Teasing you because I like you and all that nonsense.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Benedict said, mock-swooning on the outside but real-swooning on the inside. “What do you think? Find a house that looks empty and invite ourselves in?”

“Worked last time.” Martin said.

Benedict drove down a long, wide stretch of road lined with large houses, complete with sprawling front yards and fences.

“There are nice,” Martin said. “But do you think they’ll be empty?”

“Well, we can narrow it down a bit by trying homes with no cars in the driveway. It won’t really guarantee that the no one will be home, but it will help us figure out where to start. These homes look like they belonged to people who were relatively well-off. It’s possible that they have additional homes elsewhere and when they heard the news of the zombie plague, they fled.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Martin asked. “You’re better off just staying where you are, somewhere you know.”

“If you remember,” Benedict said. “you and I knew full well that there was talk of some weird virus and we flew to the other side of the world for a _movie premiere_.”

“What _were_ we thinking?” Martin asked.

“We weren’t taking it seriously. Here,” Benedict said, parking the van in front of a massive house with wide windows and a long driveway. “Let’s try this house first.”

“Crowbar ready.” Martin said.

“Axe ready.”

They left the van and headed up the driveway. The entire sky was that barely-blue dim of twilight, save for a twinge of orange cutting across the west, and Benedict wondered how many others were watching it from the safety of their zombie-proof hideaways, stealing glances from dirt-streaked basement windows at the remains of the world as they thought about a time when the sky didn’t seem quite so far away.

Benedict and Martin reached the front door, and Martin tapped his crowbar against the window.

“Fuck it, let’s just break in.” Benedict said.

“Such an irresponsible tactic from someone who’s usually so—poised and prepared.”

“Martin,” Benedict said, grabbing the crowbar from Martin and wedging it against the doorframe, “I am tired and filthy and hungry and if I have to kill a zombie or three in order to do something about that, so be it.”

“Right, then.”

The door was only _slightly_ damaged by Benedict’s act of intrusion, and they stepped into the home with their weapons drawn.

“Hello, zombies? Hi, we’re just popping in for a moment. Don’t mind us.” Martin said.

 “Shh, listen,” Benedict said. “Someone’s here.”

There was a faint male voice sounding from somewhere within the house, although neither man could quite pinpoint its location. Benedict walked down the main hallway into the kitchen until the voice grew louder.

“Who the hell is he talking to?”

_ “ _ _ —regret to inform you that there is no cure at this time. This has been an urgent message from the CDC. This is a recording. You are listening to an urgent message from the CDC. The current epidemic has been upgraded— _ ”

“Radio,” Benedict said. “but there’s no—ah, battery-operated. I see.”

They continued inspecting the home, slinking down corridors and peeking in through half-open doors. The power outage and the dimming sun made in near impossible to see, but it was evident that whoever lived in the home had fled at the first sign of trouble.

“There’s no one here,” Benedict said, after he’d finished a careful inspection of the first and second floors, and the basement. He and Martin headed into the kitchen. “Also, there’s not much food. The homeowners must have taken the majority of it with them before they left.”

“Good thinking. Doesn’t help us much, though.”

“No, it doesn’t. But we still have several packets of dried noodles from the store and they did leave behind some tinned vegetables. And there’s a gas stove so even though the power’s out, we’ll still be able to have a hot meal. I know it’s not a proper dinner like you wanted, but—”

“It’s perfect. Honestly. And if we have running water, I am going to take a fucking shower,” He rubbed his hands together in delight. “I’ll take my crowbar just in case.”

Benedict laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all, and began rifling through the silverware drawer for a can opener. He’d shower after, but right now he was too hungry to care about how filthy he was.

He listened to the sound of the water running in the bathroom and smiled to himself. These were the little things that never would have happened before the apocalypse, so it was hard for him to despise the series of events that led up to him standing in someone else’s kitchen, attempting to make tinned vegetables and dehydrated noodles into something special and listening to Martin sing old Motown classics in the shower. His baser instincts floated the idea of joining Martin in the shower, stripping down to nothing as he walked across the house, flinging back the shower curtain and getting an eyeful (and handful and anything-ful) of a wet, naked Martin, but this—this was good too.

Dinner was quiet and, thanks to a few tiny votive candles Martin brought in from the living room, filled with a sweet orange glow that spoke more of necessity than romance. They huddled together at the kitchen table and devoured their respective meals, mouths and stomachs grateful sustenance.

 “Remember the first night?” Benedict asked. “Having dinner in that restaurant together…”

“And then— _zombies_ ,” Martin said. “It’s a good thing you booked a room at a hotel so close to the restaurant.”

“Why _did_ you go with me?” Benedict asked, and Martin shrugged.

“I knew that you’d be a good person to have around in an apocalypse. And—yup, there you go. You’re blushing. Doesn’t take much, does it? The littlest bit of flattery and your cheeks go completely pink.”

“Shut up,” Benedict said. “Remember that night in the house?”

“I do remember.  I also remember how I had to beg to get you to sleep in that bed with me.”

“You didn’t have to beg _that_ much.”

“I remember the next morning, too. ‘Don’t stop, Martin. Don’t you dare stop.’ What _were_ you dreaming about?” Martin asked. “I mean, I _could_ hazard a guess but I’d rather hear you say it, to be perfectly honest with you.”

 “I was dreaming about you and I in that bed together. Only—well—not sleeping.” And if he hadn’t already been blushing furiously, this would have sent him right over the edge.

“I see. You have a lot of dreams like that about me?”

“Not as many as you’d think. And you know, I was very good these past few nights.”

“Good how?”

“If you _must_ know,” Benedict said, “I usually prefer to _not_ wear clothes when I’m sleeping.”

“ _Really_? Go on.”

“That’s it. I sleep naked. It’s more comfortable that way.”

“Fuck me,” Martin said, shaking his head. “What I’d give to—sleep—naked—you—”

“Maybe tonight,” Benedict said. “I mean about the—yeah. Not then—other thing. I still haven’t decided where we’re going to sleep.”

“Despite the extremely welcome bit of knowledge that you’ve just imparted, I almost want to just keep driving,” Martin said. “I don’t know why. I just want to get to wherever it is we’re going. I’m tired of all this traveling but I just want to be in one place and stay there.”

“I do too.”

“And how do we even know what this outpost is, anyway?” Martin asked. “It could be anything. It could just be some random bloke’s house.”

“It could be. Something tells me it isn’t, though.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“So you want to keep on going?” Benedict asked. “You don’t want to rest at all?”

“I want to keep going. I know it’s dangerous, but it’s going to be dangerous no matter when we travel. Besides, there aren’t as many zombies out here so we’re at least sort of safe. And yeah, I know the whole ‘fewer people, hungrier zombies’ bit but there are two of us and we’re pretty damn good at taking them on together. I’m not afraid.”

Benedict took Martin’s hand and pulled him close, breathing in the scent of his hair and pressing his cheek against Martin’s forehead.

“What’s all this about?” Martin asked.

“Because I feel like someday I’m going to regret not doing this more.”

“Nuzzling my head?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re being weird.”

“I just have this feeling.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“I would if I could,” Benedict said. “I don’t really know what I’m feeling right now.”

Martin nudged his head out from underneath the possessive weight of Benedict’s cheek, placed his hands against the sharpest angle of Benedict’s jaw and _kissed_. Benedict didn’t stop to categorize the kiss as past, present or future: he simply kissed back. It was a _good_ kiss too. It felt like it was radiating from the darkest, more repressed hollows of his heart, like something he’d been holding within him and was finally bold enough to reveal.

Martin slid his hands beneath Benedict’s shirt and traced his fingers along the smooth expanse of warm skin. Benedict recoiled in spite of himself.

“Sorry.” Martin said as he felt Benedict’s skin tense beneath his fingers.

“No,” Benedict said. “I just—wasn’t expecting that. It was good though.”

Martin smiled against Benedict’s lips and kissed him again. Benedict kissed back harder this time, translating the tenderness of Martin’s touch into words: _yes I want to do this yes I want this with you and I want this now_.

“I—um—where do you—bedroom?” Benedict stammered. Ordinarily nervousness gave way to rambling streams of nonsense but Martin had effectively dampened his ability to string together even passably coherent sentences. Martin was silent as well as he gripped Benedict’s wrist and led him into the downstairs bedroom.

It was strange, sneaking beneath someone else’s sheets and Benedict thought about to whom they may have belonged. It hardly mattered anymore – as far as Benedict was concerned, he and Martin were the new rightful owners. They lay next to one another, wrapped against each other’s bodies.

“Are you okay?” Benedict asked as he tugged at the hem of Martin’s shirt. Martin nodded.

“It’s not like I haven’t—”

“But _we_ haven’t.”

“True.”

Martin pulled off his shirt and Benedict nearly felt embarrassed in the face of Martin’s willing vulnerability. This, Benedict realized, was weakness and recklessness and guilt and if it didn’t taste so damn good on his lips and sate the neediest bits of his heart, he wouldn’t have allowed himself to indulge in it. _This is real_ , Benedict thought as his fingertips pressed against Martin’s back. He curled his leg around Martin and bit lightly against his shoulder, easing the presumably mild pain with a kiss. _This is happening_.

Benedict slid out of his jeans and kicked them to the floor and Martin took it as a cue to do the same. It was the most naked they’d ever been in front of one another and Benedict swallowed back his nerves with kisses, distracting his thoughts by tracing the contours of Martin’s mouth and savoring each and every slow slide of Martin’s tongue against his. Emboldened by the intensity of their kisses, Benedict slid his hand down Martin’s torso and rested his hand on Martin’s hip, teasing his fingers against the waistband of Martin’s boxer shorts.

“If you want me to slow down.” Benedict said, knowing that Martin was completing the thought in his mind.

“No,” Martin whispered. “No, this is good.” He pressed his hand against Benedict’s and together, they pushed away the fabric leaving Martin completely naked in his arms.

“You’re amazing like this.” Benedict said.

“Now you.”

“Not wasting any time, huh?”

“Look, I get this one night with you, right?” Martin breathed. “I’m—why am I talking? Why, _oh god—_ ”

 “Tell me what you want.” Benedict said as he tossed his own boxers off the edge of the bed.

“I want this,” Martin answered. “until—yeah. I just want this.”

Benedict stared into Martin’s eyes as he began arcing his body against Martin’s in a smooth, steady rhythm.

“ _Yes_ ,” Martin breathed.”God yes, just like that.”

“What about this?” Benedict asked, and he reached between their legs and grasped their cocks together.

“Okay, and you said you’d never done this before. You’re _– fuck_ – awfully good at that for someone who—”

“Shh.”

There were no words left, just skin and sweat and movement and breath and hands rebelling against the _shouldn’ts_ and _can’ts_ that they’d finally given up on pretending to obey. Benedict splayed his hands across the small of Martin’s back and pressed him closer. Their mutual pleasure – evidenced in the slight low moans and breathless _don’t stop yes right there_ demands – was the product of their long-awaited fulfillment of their respective curiosities, rather than the result of any discernible skill possessed by either man. But inexperience was a nonissue for both of them – Benedict was high on the sound of Martin’s moans, primal and unabashedly fucking _loud_.

Martin came first, tensing his hand around Benedict’s shoulder as he did. The mere sight and sound of Martin in such a state – as well as the sensation of Martin’s come spilling against his hand – brought about the same response in Benedict. They held each other, weak and messy and breathless and satisfied. Benedict kissed Martin’s hair, damp with sweat and still smelling of shampoo.

_ You were amazing_ , he thought.

“As were you.”

“Did I say that out loud?”

“You really have no control over your own mouth when you get into bed, do you?”

“Pillow talk with Martin Freeman. Always a pleasure.”

“Speaking of which, I—er—yeah. _Wow_.”

“Mmm.” Benedict said, taking another deep breath.

“I love you.” Martin said. His clammy fingers traced along Benedict’s shoulder.

“I love you too.”

Martin opened his mouth to say something, but closed it almost immediately. His brow was slightly furrowed in way that Benedict had never seen. Ordinarily, Benedict would have demanded an explanation but trying to reach for words in his post-orgasm haze was about as futile as attempting to ignore the tempting rivulets of sweat trickling down Martin’s clavicle, begging to be licked away.

They held each other for a few moments, unsure of when to let go. Benedict decided that if it were up to him, he wouldn’t. They’d lay in that bed forever, learning and relearning each other’s bodies and playing out years of repressed desire in the guest room of an unsuspecting stranger. But eventually, after the sweat and heat became too much to bear, he inched away ever so slightly in a delicate motion that said _I’m not going anywhere. I’m still here, Martin. I’m still here._

The rest of the night happened in slow motion – a shower, another inspection of the kitchen cupboards, a thank-you note on the kitchen table (left by Benedict, just in case the homeowners returned and wanted to know why their front door had been mangled by a crowbar and their guest room had been defiled) and a hand-in-hand walk down the driveway toward the van.

It had never been easier to imagine that Martin was his. The apocalypse had molded Benedict into a thief – he’d splintered away bits of a stranger’s front door, helped himself to tinned vegetables, raided shops for supplies, fucked someone else’s partner on someone else’s sheets. He held Martin’s hand a little tighter and looked up at the sky, wondering what else he could possibly do in Martin’s name.

There was another world that still existed in Benedict’s mind, memories of a time when there was no need for axes or crowbars, a time when _survival_ was a passive transition from day to day and not an urgent matter of life and death. How comforting they’d once seemed, those traces of his unlived past and the thoughts of how things might have been if the world had not been thrown off its course. But _this_ world – this fresh, new tangle of disease and contagion and blood and fear, was the world that gave him Martin. It was worth every glorious mistake, every bit of it, as long as he had Martin by his side.


	9. Chapter 9

Benedict drove on and smoked cigarette after cigarette until he noticed half the pack had gone missing. _These aren’t your cigarettes,_ he reminded himself. _Not your van, not your food, not your supplies, not your Martin._ He made a mental list of everything in the van that actually belonged to him. When he could only think of the backpack he’d brought along with him during his flight from London, he gritted his teeth, unsure as to whether the apocalypse was stealing from him or the other way around.

There was the intrinsic weakness in allowing his heart to be swayed by so little – all Martin had to do was kiss him and it was as if all of his _no stop don’t_ thoughts had never existed. And when _Martin_ meant _smooth_ _naked warmth thrusting against him_ – forget it – Benedict’s hands and lips had already won the race against his inhibitions. Then, there was the weakness in wanting _more_. It had been a mistake, but it would have been easier if he could classify it as a mistake not worth repeating. He’d been given a taste and it had not been enough. He wanted everything.

 _And that’s precisely why you’ve always stayed away_ , he told himself, _because just some of him was never going to be enough and you knew it_.

He lit another cigarette.

Martin slept, head pressed against the window, and Benedict wished he could do the same. Another mistake in the increasingly long list: not _sleeping_. He hadn’t wanted to linger at the house for too long; the more time he and Martin spent there, the less likely it was that either one of them would feel compelled to leave that bed and as much as he wouldn’t have minded round two, he’d forced himself to prioritize safety over the continued sullying of that unsuspecting stranger’s bedroom.

“Martin? _Martin_.” Benedict said, nudging Martin’s shoulder.

“Mmmmmmph?”

“I need to sleep. Just for a little while.”

“‘s safe?” Martin mumbled.

“Is it safe? Safe to sleep? Probably not. But I can’t stay awake.”

Benedict parked between two abandoned station wagons in an attempt to make the van look like it has been abandoned as well. He unbuckled his seatbelt, slipped between the gap in the seats and flopped down onto the carpeted interior of the van, sprawling amidst the supplies.

“Ben,” Martin laughed, “at least move things out of the way first.”

“Nope,” Benedict mumbled. “goodnight.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Martin said, following Benedict into the back of the van. “We have blankets and everything and you’re lying down on _nothing_.”

Martin unfolded the blankets and began constructing a makeshift bed. It started small but evolved into an expanse of sleeping bags and fleece that was large enough for both of them. Martin slipped beneath the blankets and rested his head against the neatly folded bit of sleeping bag that he’d fashioned into something resembling a pillow.

Benedict reveled in the comfort, wiggling his toes against the softness that surrounded them, and it didn’t take long before the mere act of lying next to Martin ushered in that all-too-familiar deluge of thoughts of _all the things he wanted to do to him_. It hadn’t taken much for Martin to arrive at the same conclusion, judging by the way Martin’s hand was tracing light circles against a small bit of exposed skin between Benedict’s shirt and jeans.

“I said I wanted to _sleep_ ,” Benedict said, but being awake was starting to look like a welcome alternative. “This isn’t—”

“I’m not doing anything,” Martin said innocently, wriggling a bit closer. Benedict could still detect the faintest scent of shampoo in Martin’s hair. He was powerless against his memory and for an instant, he and Martin were between those sheets again, sweaty and blissfully hard and so deeply entrenched in _the moment_ that the concepts of right and wrong no longer mattered.

“Bullshit.” Benedict hissed.

“Oh, so you don’t want me to…” Martin trailed off and let his hands do the talking as they made a downward path, dipping beneath the waistband of Benedict’s trousers. The friction of Martin’s clammy hand against Benedict’s cock felt slightly uncomfortable, but only at first. He thought about letting Martin continue, about how good it would feel to come apart in Martin’s hands and to shake and tremble against his body – and how the subsequent messiness would be worth it. He thought about telling Martin to keep going, about thrusting into Martin’s hand and biting back moans and threading his fingers through Martin’s hair as he slipped into the sweet blankness of orgasm.

“Martin,” Benedict said, gripping Martin’s wrist. He was still unsure of what he wanted. “That feels so fucking good but—”

“—but what?”

“But—I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel slightly wrong, okay?”

“I’m sorry.” Martin kept his hand where it was, but stopped moving it quite as eagerly.

“No—don’t apologize—you have nothing to be sorry about. It’s me.  It’s this whole thing.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know. It’s sort of like smoking, I suppose. I know it’s bad for me. I know I shouldn’t do it but when I light up that cigarette—oh _God_ , is it good. And I think, you know, one more won’t kill me, so I smoke another one. And then another and then the next thing you know I’m holding an empty pack of cigarettes.”

“And your pants are on the floor and I’m biting your shoulder to keep from screaming.”

“Yes, that,” Benedict laughed, “So you understand what I’m saying. If I kiss you or if you start doing— _that—_ ” he moaned as Martin slid his hand, “—if I just have a tiny bit of you, it’s so hard for me to stop because you don’t want to stop and _I_ don’t want to stop and I just end up wanting everything.”

“Everything?” Martin said, faltering slightly. “Wow, that’s—I don’t know, I’m fine with what—what we did last night.”

“No, I meant—not _just_ sex. Obviously I want that too because _look at you_ , but I start wanting the stupid little things too.”

“Like? For example?”

“You’re going to make me say them, aren’t you? Fine. Like waking up early on a Saturday morning and watching the sunrise together and arguing about what we’re going to make for breakfast and holding your hand in the car and watching movies together and kissing during the boring parts and—and it’s—it never would have happened in the old world, and it _can’t_ happen in this one because none of that even exists anymore.”

“I see,” Martin said quietly. “The stupid little things.”

“The stupid little things.”

“And when you kiss me, you start wanting that?”

“Martin, when I _look_ at you, I start wanting that. Kissing you just makes me want it even more.”

“I had that life, you know. I had those stupid little things.”

“Yeah.”

“It was a good life, too. I won’t say that I took it for granted, because that would imply that I had no idea what I had – and I did. But I _also_ thought that it was always going to be there. I never thought for one second that fucking zombies were going to show up and change everything. And I sort of wish that I’d been more prepared, I suppose. I wish I’d had a chance to say goodbye.”

“I know you still miss her. Miss them, I should say. Don’t think that I’ve never seen you pick up a land line phone just in case. And I know you still hold on to that mobile of yours as if the battery’s magically going to recharge itself. I’m not trying to replace anyone or anything and that’s why I feel so bloody fucking guilty.”

“It must have been hell for you,” Martin said. “before all of this happened.”

“It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t like you weren’t in my life at all. We were friends and that was good too. But this…”

He edged the back of his hand along Martin’s cheek, trying his damndest to make the moment last. He wanted to remember this feeling, of the softness of Martin’s skin and electricity that sparked within him whenever he and Martin touched. He was so used to believing it was all mere seconds away from disappearing, a thought process that should have been exacerbated by constant presence of the end of the world. But Martin’s presence gave everything an illusion of safety, like standing beneath a tree in a lightning storm.

“Sleep,” Martin said. “I want to sleep too. Let’s just sleep.”

Benedict nodded wearily against the synthetic comfort of the balled-up blanket beneath his head.

He didn’t dream – or if he did, he failed to remember – but when he woke, bleary-eyed and groggy with his face smushed up against Martin’s shirt, he realized that he wouldn’t have minded a temporary reprieve from the unassailable onslaught of the present. He watched Martin sleep for a little while, hoping to high heaven that Martin wouldn’t wake and find out. It was also exceedingly difficult to ignore the fact that they’d fallen asleep while Martin’s hand was still tucked inside Benedict’s trousers.

“Martin,” Benedict said, nudging his nose against Martin’s cheek and kissing him in spite of himself, “we ought to get going.”

“Time is it?” Martin mumbled.

Benedict regretfully pulled Martin’s hand from his jeans, shook his head, and crawled toward the front of the van to look out the window.

He heard them before he saw them, silhouettes against the cerulean glow of dawn – he’d have recognized that sound anywhere. Mindless and yet somehow deliberate, slow and infinitely deadly. Their distinct sound had been muted by the glass at the hospital but now it reverberated against the rubble – the rolling groan of the undead.

 _Fuck_ , he thought. His limbs still ached from the previous day’s acrobatics, not to mention he was still half-hard and no desire to fight zombies in such a state. He stole a careful glance through the rear-view mirror and tried to count out just how many zombies they would have to face. They were forming an asymmetrical perimeter around the mass of abandoned vehicles, and their appetites had been undoubtedly whetted by Benedict and Martin’s presence.

“Martin, they’re everywhere.” Benedict whispered. He crouched against the side of the van, moving each of his limbs as if they were made of ultra-thin glass. It would be hell to get out of this one, he was sure of it. The zombies were already making a tightly-packed crowd near the rear of the van and although the idea of running over them seemed appealing, he did not want to damaging the van beyond repair, which would leave them trapped and without any chance of escape.

Martin rose and rubbed his eyes, which opened wide once he heard a noticeably louder bellow emanating from the left-hand side of the van.

“Their wounds look new,” Benedict whispered. “They can’t possibly have turned more than a day ago.”

“You know what I bet?” Martin said, matching Benedict’s whisper. “I bet people probably thought it was safe. They thought the worst was over, or they ran out of food and came out of hiding to see what they could find. Then, the next thing they knew, some undead fuck’s teeth are chomping away.”

“I think you might be on to something with that one.” Benedict said.

Martin looked through the rear window of the van.

“There are so many of them,” he said. “There’s no way you and I can get out and fight, what, _dozens_ of them? I think you and I could take out _maybe_ six zombies at once but anything more than that—”

“We can’t just sit in the van forever.”

“Obviously. Could we just—drive through them or something?”

“Dangerous,” Benedict said, “dangerous and ineffective. Injuring their limbs will slow the zombies down, but it won’t destroy them. And on top of that, I don’t want to harm the van in any way. It’s sturdy, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

“But we can’t get out of the van. They’ll swarm us.”

“I know.”

“We could wait for them to pass?” Martin offered. “Just for a little while?”

“There are just _so many of them_ ,” Benedict sighed. “and they’re moving so _fucking_ slowly.”

“Zombies aren’t really known for their speed.”

“Look who’s suddenly an expert on the living dead.”

“I’m just saying, in movies and now, I have never seen a zombie fucking _sprint_. It’s just not done. They sort of—shuffle.”

“I say we wait a bit and see how long it takes for them to pass. We’re going to have to wait anyway until they’re completely out of our line of vision because the minute we rev up this van they’re going to hear it and start _shuffling_ back. By that point, we should be long gone. Okay, be quiet and stay down.”

They waited for a few moments, both lying supine against the van floor. Had the goings-on outside the van been any different, Benedict might have stolen another kiss or grabbed Martin’s arse or done _something_ to add some levity to the situation, but merely thinking about it was enough to drive him to distraction and he was sure that shying away from vigilance would not be wise – even though _God_ seeing Martin lying like that, his predatory eyes fixed on his crowbar, ready to jam it right through the eye socket of the first zombie that crossed his path – that was quite literally all it took. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if doing so would prevent him being, once again, half-hard during an imminent zombie attack.

“Have we waited long enough?” Martin muttered.

“Sorry, what? Oh, yes,” Benedict said, snapping back to reality. “Let me look.”

He slunk backward toward the rear of the van and peered through the window.

“Shit,” Benedict said. “There are still so fucking many. And—Martin, get down!”

Benedict heaved himself toward the front of the van and pressed his palm against Martin’s back.

“I think one of them saw me.”

Benedict closed his eyes and held his breath and focused on the proximity of the sounds. They were growing closer and more pronounced with each passing moment, and he knew that there wasn’t enough time to cobble together a logical and effective attack – within a matter of seconds, the zombies would have formed a deadly perimeter around the van, noses filled with the scent of fresh meat.

“Martin,” Benedict whispered, “I hope you’re ready to take out some zombies.”

“Guess I have to be.”

The groans outside the van were even louder now, and he could feel the van begin to sway back and forth as the crowd of zombies slammed against it, desperate for what was inside but unable to utilize their limbs in any meaningful manner.

“They’re going to knock this fucking thing over.” Martin muttered.

Benedict clambered into the front seat, grabbed his axe and plunged it through the safety-glass window. It shattered into a thousand tiny razor-sharp crumbles.  Grimacing, he stretched his upper body through what was left of the van window and looked for the nearest zombie. The van was completely surrounded and Benedict had his pick of where to strike first. He started with the nearest, hacking through the zombie’s neck. Martin followed suit, demolishing the passenger-side window and plunging his crowbar deep into the nearest zombie’s skull.

“Be careful!” Benedict called. “Don’t let any of the zombie blood get on you, _please_.”

“Yeah, well same t—” Martin began, but he was interrupted by the thick _thwack_ of Benedict’s axe slicing through the neck of yet another zombie. Benedict whirled to his right and with three more well-timed swings, he severed two more zombie necks and cracked right through the cranium of a particularly bloody zombie, whose wounds still looked relatively new.

“Got one!” Martin called. “Right through the eye.”

“Good, good.”

“How much longer do you think we can keep this up?” Martin said.

“Depends on if the crowd gets bigger or if we can take them all out.”

The horde of ravenous zombies grew, and their combined weight jostled the van back and forth, making it harder for Benedict to swing accurately.

“I can’t keep doing this,” Martin said. “There are too many of them.”

“I know,” Benedict said. “Can you reach the backpack from where you are?”

“Just barely, why?”

“I want you to have it just in case we need to make a hasty retreat.”

Martin nodded and reached down between the two front seats to grab the backpack. He slung it over his shoulder.

“Now what?”

Before Benedict could answer, the van creaked and swayed one last time and with a sickening scrape of metal against pavement, it tipped. Benedict fell backward, plummeting downward and crashing down on top of Martin, who was trapped between the front seat and the splintered remains of the passenger-side window.

“Are you okay?” Benedict yelled. He pushed himself off Martin and made a cursory assessment of the damage – Martin looked unharmed, but it had been a hell of a collision and he wanted to make sure that Martin had not been injured in a way that could not be fixed with gauze and bandages and aspirin.

“I think so,” Martin said, gripping his neck in pain. “Fuck, Ben, you’re bleeding.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Benedict said. “Look.”

He craned his neck upward just as a zombie was reaching its long, mutilated arm through a sizeable crack in the windshield. Martin groaned, hunched down until he was eye-to-eye with the zombie, and hacked into its eye with his crowbar until he was certain that substantial damage had been done.

“Still got the backpack?” Benedict asked. “We’re going to have to make a break for it and we are going to need those supplies, I’m sure.”

“Still got it. Go through the window, you think?” Martin asked.

“Yup. We’ll climb out and make a fucking run for it. Ready?”

“Ready.”

He looked at Martin one more time, making sure that their respective surges of adrenaline hadn’t dampened the pain from any newly-forming injuries. There was a shallow gash across Martin’s forehead that was only just beginning to bleed but aside from that and a few more light scratches on his forearms, he looked to be in fair condition. Benedict tried not to linger on the faint sheen of sweat glistening on Martin’s skin and how reminiscent it was of that same freshly-fucked glow he’d been radiating for the past few hours. _So not the time or place_ , he told himself.

Benedict tossed his axe onto the side of the van and pushed up against the exterior of the window, careful to avoid the lingering bits of glass studding the edges. He could see the hollow-minded hunger in their near-vacant expressions. Using the sides of the van as leverage, he pushed again and fell to the pavement, nearly crashing down onto a zombie’s foot.

“Now you!” Benedict said, standing and reaching for his axe. In one sleek, fluid motion, he whirled it through the zombie’s neck and brandished it threateningly, knowing full well that no zombie possessed the capability to discern the meaning in such an action. “Toss the crowbar first and get the fuck out!”

He took his eyes off the zombie horde for a moment and watched Martin emerge from the van window – first his hands and then his head and then his torso. He struggled a bit, groaning in pain as he heaved himself from the van.

“Fucking run!” Benedict yelled, once Martin had risen to his feet.

They tore across the battered remains of the highway, weapons in hand, and Benedict knew at once that they’d be safe. There was no way that the zombies could catch up in numbers great enough to overpower them and even if a smattering of them did manage to follow, Benedict and Martin were armed and would be able to dispatch the zombies without missing a beat.

“Fuck, I hate that we had to leave so much behind,” Benedict said. “All those blankets. And we had a few days’ worth of food left in that van.”

 “Is there any way we can go back for it?”

“I’m not sure,” Benedict said. “That was a pretty big swarm of them and even though they were on the move, it will be a while before they clear out of there.”

“So we’ve lost everything?”

“I’m afraid we have.”

“At least we have each other?” Martin said brightly.

“At least we have each other,” Benedict agreed. “and now that we’re clear of the zombies, let’s take a look at these injuries of ours, shall we?”

They sat against the hood of yet another abandoned sedan and Martin opened the backpack. There was still a lot of gauze and disinfectant left over and in no time, they’d patched up their injuries to the best of their abilities. Benedict had to admit that they looked slightly foolish with large bandages adhered seemingly at random, but knew that it was better than not tending to their wounds at all.

“Car keys.” Benedict said, sticking his head through the open car window.

“I’ve had about enough of vehicular transport for one day,” Martin muttered. “but it doesn’t look like we have much of a choice. I’m not going to walk aimlessly until we end up somewhere.”

“We’ll drive until we reach the next exit,” Benedict said. “We’re all out of supplies so we will probably need to do another breaking-and-entering-and-scrounging mission. It would also help if the place we break into is somewhere we can settle for the night. I know it’s early to think about that but it’s making me nervous that we’ve got nothing but our weapons and what’s in this backpack.”

Martin nodded as slumped into the passenger seat.

“Mind if we just take a breather for a moment?” he asked.

“Don’t mind at all.”

Benedict tilted his head against the car seat. His limbs were still jittery and his heart was still pounding and Martin sitting next to him was doing absolutely nothing to alleviate his desire. His post-zombie fight adrenaline was commingling with his lust in a most inconvenient fashion, making Martin look particularly delicious. He stole a glance and he couldn’t help but fixate on the pulsing veins in Martin’s hands and arms and the sparkling beads of sweat trailing from his hairline. There was still some zombie blood on his clothes which _should_ have put Benedict right off but instead it reminded him of how fucking sexy Martin looked when he was battling the undead. He looked as obscene as Benedict had ever seen him – even the steady rise and fall of his chest reminded him of sex.

“Can’t get enough, can you?” Martin asked, leaning his head in Benedict’s direction and smiling out of the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, fuck off.” Benedict hissed. But he could mask his lust about as easily as he could hide his erection and he figured now was as good a time as any to set off down the highway – lingering would just turn his lewd thoughts into actions and as fucking amazing as it would be to take Martin right then and there, on the side of the highway, he was sure they’d find another outlet for their wanton carelessness.

He started driving and attempted to focus his thoughts on anything but Martin. He wanted to panic about their lack of supplies and unknown destination but he couldn’t shake that just-had-the-best-fuck-of-my-life feeling, wholly unbidden though it was. He dug into his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter and drove with his knees until his cigarette was lit and that first sweet exhalation of smoke was wafting out the window.

Benedict drove on and on, passing endless highway nothingness. It all seemed so nondescript at this point – car after car, corpse after corpse, building after building, and nothing seemed to give any evidence that there was an outpost up ahead. The sun rose higher, the air grew hotter and Benedict became increasingly frustrated as the road seemed to be hell-bent on leading them nowhere.

“Nearest exit,” he muttered. “I’m ravenous and we need to find food.”

“Sounds good to me.” Martin said.

A few minutes later, their stolen car was rounding along an exit. Benedict hoped that this was one of those exits that would spit them out right into a residential area and he was dismayed when he found that the exit led to yet another long empty road.

“Fuck,” Benedict said. “Oh well, I guess we can just keep driving? Turn left?”

“Fine.”

He drove on and after a few minutes, a large structure caught his eye. The first element he noticed was a slightly mangled chain link fence, set back about five feet from the highway’s metal barrier. As they drew nearer, he saw that it was encircling a large brick building. He slowed down the car just as he noticed several armed guards standing along the edge of the roof.

“Martin, look.”

“Is this it?” Martin asked. “This has to be it.”

“I don’t—”

“Guards!” shouted a man on the roof. “Suspicious activity at the West Entrance!”

“I think that’s us.” Benedict whispered.

“It’s absolutely us. A fucking entire police department – guns and all – and we’re in a stolen car, toting along a blood-caked axe and a crowbar covered in zombie brains. Well, we had a good run, Ben. Off to jail.”

“Hands the air!” yelled an officer as he jumped to the ground from the last step of the fire escape. “Hands where I can see them!”

“Yes, officer!” Benedict yelled. He and Martin both raised their arms skyward, hoping that there wasn’t some alternate American definition of hands-in-the-air of which they were previously unaware.

“Stay right where you are. You move, and I’ll tell them to open fire. I am not fucking around.”

“All right!”

The officer approached the car and lowered his sunglasses to get a better look at Benedict and Martin.

“Either one of you been bit?”

“Sorry?”

“The fuck—more Brits?” asked the officer, upon noticing their accents. “You left over from the other group?”

“What? No, we’re not from any group. It’s just us. I’m Benedict and this is Martin. We’re—well, we _were_ en route from L.A.”

“That’s nice. You can drop your hands now and I am going to repeat my question: have either one of you been bit?”

“No. Martin here—there was a chance that he might have come in contact with some zombie blood but that was well over twenty-four hours ago and there have been no symptoms. He’s fine.”

“You two made it all the way out here from L.A.? With no supplies? Nothing at all?”

“We’ve—gone through a number of vehicles.” Benedict said sheepishly.

“Relax, I’m not going to arrest you. We just have to be wary about who we let in. If we allow anyone in who’s been infected, we’re putting hundreds of people in jeopardy, you understand?”

“I understand,” Benedict said. “We had a van but we were overrun by zombies and we had to leave it behind. We had several days’ worth of food and blankets and camping suppl—”

“And you left it all out there on the highway?” the officer said.

“Like I said, we were completely outnumbered. We did the best we could but we had to sacrifice most of what was out there.”

“I see. How was it out there in L.A.? Communication’s been completely fucking obliterated but we heard through the grapevine that it was a shit show out there. Whole city was practically eaten alive by zombies.”

“It was,” Benedict said. “We sought shelter in a hotel for a few days but when supplies ran out, we left.”

“And you’ve been out on the road ever since?”

“That’s right.”

“Strange we haven’t seen you out there. We’ve been doing spot checks in the surrounding area, keeping our eyes out for survivors and taking out zombies when we can. I’m surprised you haven’t heard any gunfire, or haven’t seen us on the back roads or anything.”

“We’ve mainly been keeping to the highway,” Benedict said. “We stopped over at the hospital for a bit. Do you know anything about what happened there?”

“Yes,” the officer said, lowering his voice. “I heard. Some of the doctors have been staying with us. It’s—most unfortunate.”

“Clearly you haven’t seen it with your own eyes,” Martin interrupted. “Fucking zombies with their limbs tied together. You know, they were _people_ before they wound up like that. They did that to _people_.”

“I can’t speak on behalf of the doctors who made that call, but I am sure that no harm was intended. Survival requires a certain amount of—lawlessness, I should think. You can’t tell me that neither one of you has made it this far by avoiding any reckless behavior.”

“He _has_ got a point.”

“That van of yours,” the officer asked. “Is it damaged beyond repair?”

“It’s tipped to one side, the glass in both windows is shattered and the right side of the windshield may or may not have a zombie corpse coming out of it. Other than that, it’s in fine working order.”

“So it can be fixed, is what you’re saying?”

“If—I mean, if you think you’re capable of retrieving it and fixing it…”

“Tell you what,” the officer said. “We could use a van like that, and we’ve got some mechanics that might be able to spruce it up a bit. You do something for us, we’ll let you two rest up here a while _and_ we’ll let you keep everything that was in the van.”

“So you’ll give us what we already had? How generous.” Martin said.

“Martin, hush,” Benedict said, “What exactly would you need from us?”

“We’ve got a team of four men,” the officer began. “Or we did, at least. They set out a few days ago in search of this supermarket that might not have been hit yet. They haven’t come back. We were going to send out a search party for them but we don’t have anyone to do it. Well, we _do_ , but we wouldn’t have enough people to stay and defend the outpost.”

“I don’t understand how this is a fair deal,” Martin interrupted. “We’ll do your dirty work and you’ll fix our van? How do we know that you’re not going to find the van, steal our supplies and fuck us over?”

“You’re smart to think like that,” said the officer, “but I assure you, this is genuine. There’s nothing to be gained in this world by not helping someone else. You can rest inside first, and then you can head out.”

The officer led Benedict and Martin through a gap in the chain-link fence, waving his hands at the guards as if to say _these guys aren’t going to wreak havoc on everyone – at ease, gentlemen._

It was obvious that the outpost had once been a police station but had been repurposed to serve the needs of the post-apocalyptic refugees. The yard had been divided into sections using long sheets of corrugated steel. Each section was outfitted with a whole manner of amenities, including pillows and blankets.

“Ran out of room inside,” the officer said, “so we rigged this up. It’s not much but if it keeps a few more people safe, it’s worth it.”

“You mentioned something about another group? Benedict asked as they walked.

“There were some flights from Heathrow that had to make emergency landings a few days back – air travel’s pretty much gone to shit at this point now that the virus is international. Besides, there was a chance that some of the passengers might have been infected and unaware. One of those flights had to land a few towns over and they’ve been trying to get the passengers to shelters ever since. Problem is, some of the shelters are so overcrowded that it’s hard to find room. More overcrowded than this, if you can imagine.”

Benedict and Martin followed the officer through door after door and pushed through the narrow, crowded hallways until they reached a large common area. It was packed with people – some were talking in hushed tones about the horrors they’d seen and some were sitting in contemplative, almost mournful silence. There were a few children dashing around the room and playing and Benedict’s heart ached for them. _For some of them, this will be all they know_ , he thought. _They’ll have barely any memories of what life was like before the zombies_.

“I’m Officer Harris, by the way. There’s food and drinks in this room and if you need anything else, just let me know. In the meantime, hang tight and I’ll be back in a few.”

“Thank you.” Benedict said. Martin nodded in response and Officer Harris turned on his heel and headed back down the hallway.

Benedict and Martin helped themselves to coffee and fresh fruit and a few slices of toast with jam and huddled into a corner.

“This isn’t so bad,” Martin said. “Really, it isn’t.”

“It’s certainly better than what we’re used to,” Benedict agreed. “Also I’m not entirely certain about what that Officer Harris wants from us. Everyone else just gets to stay here indefinitely and yet we have to prove ourselves?”

“Maybe it’s like an audition,” Martin said. “Maybe they want to see if we’d be a worthy addition to their team or something like that. You have to admit, if we weren’t us and we told someone about everything we’d done, you’d be pretty impressed.”

Benedict chewed in silence, savoring the taste of fruit and the crisp crunch of toast. He was grateful for every meal they’d had since the uprising began but this one was delicious and satisfying and well-earned. He closed his eyes and smiled – he was breathing easy for the first time in ages and he attempted to convince himself that his relaxation would last.

“Daddy?”

Benedict could sense Martin’s body tensing next to him, even before Benedict had opened his eyes to see the little girl before them. He opened them and saw Martin’s daughter gazing down in disbelief, appraising him with hopeful uncertainty. Benedict turned to Martin and saw that tears were already welling in his eyes.

“Is it really you?” she asked, holding out her hand and running a single finger along his bandaged leg. Martin reached out to her and folded her into his arms, stroking her hair and holding her close like he was certain she was about to slip away.

“It’s really me, sweetheart. It’s really me.”

“Mummy said we’d find you,” she whispered into his ear. “I knew she was right.”

“Where is she?” Martin asked.

Martin’s daughter led him by the hand toward a small circle of refugees, sipping on ice water and talking animatedly with one another. Benedict followed, his heart pounding with each step he took.

They stood at the edge of the circle and waited, and Martin stared at Amanda for a moment, watching as she talked with someone else, their son perched atop her lap. The moment Martin drew his first breath to speak, Amanda turned to look at him, wide-eyed and amazed.

“Martin.” She stood and, still holding her son’s hand, she strode across the circle. Martin held them close and buried his face in her neck. His tears were falling hard now and his light, choppy breaths had given way to heaving sobs.

“You were on that flight, weren’t you?” That flight that had to—this is why I couldn’t—you—I thought you weren’t picking up your phone because you were still angry with me. I thought you weren’t answering your mobile because—but you _couldn’t_ , could you? You were—you were flying to—”

“I was so upset,” she whispered, her lips barely an inch away from his cheek. “And there were all these news reports about—about _zombies_ and I didn’t want—I grabbed the children and we took the first flight out. We thought we were going to make it before they—emergency landing, we—so _scared_ , Martin—” She kissed him again and again and tugged on his shirt with the tips of her fingers. “We tried to get to L.A. We tried and I kept telling the kids ‘we’ll find him, we’ll find him’ and then we had to land and we ended up here and they were talking about how L.A. had been destroyed and—”

“Shh, Amanda, I’m here,” he said. “I’m here. I found you.”

Benedict stared in silence at the tearful reunion before him – it was impossible to feel anything but love as he watched the pieces of their hearts lock into place, finding everything they’d been missing. A slight sliver of something else wormed its way up from beneath contentment, refusing to accept it. It felt heavy and dark and strong and he knew that if he allowed his thoughts to dwell on it for long, it would show on his face. Instead, he clenched his fists and fought it back – there’d be a time, much later, when he’d be alone in his thoughts and he’d let go and allow the jealousy to float up to the top of his heart but at the moment, all he wanted was to see the smiles on the faces of Martin’s children and tears of happiness in their eyes and the promise of happiness that was building between them – the knowledge that as long as they had one another, they’d be safe.

“You—” Amanda turned to look at Benedict in disbelief. “You kept each other safe, didn’t you? You looked after each other.”

“Yes,” Benedict said, trying his hardest not to let his voice falter. “I told him—I told him again and again that he’d be home to you.”

Amanda smiled knowingly and wiped away a single tear.

“This whole time, I thought he was alone out there. I thought for certain that he was—I just—I didn’t want to think about it but I— _thank you_ ,” She shook her head and barely suppressed a smile. “Thank you for being with him. It’s—just such a relief to know that he was not alone.”

“I should probably go meet up with the officers and see if they’re ready for me to head out.” Benedict said.

“What do you mean, you? Weren’t we supposed to go together?”

“Yes, but I want you to be with your family. You’re finally with them and I don’t want you to be apart. Not when we have to do something so dangerous.”

“What do they want you to do?” Amanda asked.

“We have to go check up on this group that’s been missing for the past day and a half. They’d send out their own search party but they don’t have enough officers to spare and they said that they’d repair our van in return.” Benedict explained.

“We were both supposed to go,” Martin added, “but—Ben’s on his own now, if that’s what he wants.”

“Well, I’d prefer to not go alone but I understand if you don’t, or can’t, or—”

“Gentlemen,” said Officer Harris, sneaking through the crowd. “Let me know when you two are ready to head out.”

“Give us a minute, all right?” Benedict spat. “He’s just been reunited with his family. He never thought he was going to see them again. You can’t separate them. Not right now.”

“We had a deal.” Officer Harris said.

“It’s—it’s fine,” Martin said. “If I have to go, I’ll go.”

“Martin, be _careful_ ,” Amanda said. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“He does,” Benedict said. His hands wanted to give Martin a reassuring pat on the back but he no longer trusted them to do anything platonically when Martin was concerned. “I can assure you that he is very, _very_ good at killing zombies. I would want no one else by my side.”

“I learned from the best.” Martin muttered.

Amanda looked back and forth between Benedict and Martin, and Benedict could feel his own cheeks flushing.

“Get back here in one piece, all right?” Amanda said. “I am not losing you again, do you hear me?”

“Yes. Believe me, I—I don’t want to lose you again either. I am doing this for you. For us. So we can be safe.”

They kissed one more time, lingering just long enough to make Benedict wonder if Amanda could taste his kisses on Martin’s lips. When they parted, Benedict and Martin followed Officer Harris outside into the parking lot and out to the front of the outpost, where their car was parked by the side of the highway.

“The supermarket’s a few miles down the road, that way,” the officer said, “You can’t miss it. Big parking lot, lots of cars, possibly some zombies. Our men _should_ be inside. If there are men in uniform who have turned into zombies, you have our permission to attack. Do you have weapons?”

“He has a crowbar and I have an axe.”

“No guns?”

“Guns draw too much attention,” Benedict said. “Plus, axes and crowbars don’t need to be reloaded.”

“Good thinking, actually.” Officer Harris said. He gave them one last look and opened his mouth to speak, but instead he simply nodded and walked back to the outpost.

“Ben,” Martin began as Benedict started driving, “what are we going to do?”

“About the zombies?”

“About—Ben, I didn’t think I was—she’s— _fuck_ , what did we do?”

“You mean what happened between us?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Martin hissed, “Yes, I mean what happened between us.”

“First, we need to take out some fucking zombies and rescue some police officers,” Benedict said. “Then, we can discuss everything else. I know you’re going through a lot right now. Believe me, I am too. But we’ve got to stay focused on this.”

“I can’t,” Martin said, “I can’t do this. This is too much.”

“It’s going to happen whether you like it or not,” Benedict said. “There’s no getting out of this. Any of this. This is the world we’re in now. It’s completely fucking out of control and it’s a mess and it’s dangerous and we don’t know what’s going to happen. We did what we had to do – we lived one moment to the next because we had to. And we didn’t do so badly, did we? We did pretty damn well, I think.”

“We did.” Martin agreed.

“After this, you can be done, if you want,” Benedict said. “If you never want to fight another zombie again, you don’t have to. Think about it that way.”

“Good.”

They drove a few more miles down the road until they reached what had to be the supermarket. The parking lot was filled with cars, just like Officer Harris had said it would be, and there were long trails of blood painting the pavement.

“Crowbar ready?” Benedict asked.

“Yup. Axe ready?”

“Yup.”

They exited the car and slipped through the broken automatic door.

Unlike the houses and the shops to which Benedict and Martin were accustomed, the supermarket had been thoroughly ransacked. There was almost nothing of it that still resembled a proper, functioning place of business. Benedict took slow, deliberate steps as he followed the crusted-over trail of blood down what might have once been a produce aisle.

The deli cases had been fashioned into makeshift bunkers and a lone man slumped against it, gun in hand. Surrounding him were several uniformed corpses, and the gaping bullet wounds through their craniums gave testimony to what they would have become.

“Hello? Don’t shoot!” Benedict said, raising his arms. “We’re not—well, obviously we’re not zombies, because we can talk. We were sent here by Officer Harris to see—to see if you were all right.”

“They got him,” said a young police officer, and his voice faltered as if it was unsure of his own ability to speak the words, “and I can’t—I didn’t think anyone would come back for me. I thought they’d just leave me here to die. I’d rather they just leave me here to die. Because I—I just—”

They turned and watched as a writhing mess of a man twisted before them, fighting his restraints. His ghost-white eyes were ringed in darkness and there was a large, partially-congealed wound on his right leg.

Benedict looked into the young officer’s eyes and for a moment, there was only understanding. He knew that look, that steely, hopeless desperation. It was the same feeling that was stirring within him – the delicate roots of an unspoken, unavoidable farewell anchoring inside his heart.

“He was your friend, wasn’t he?” Benedict asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve killed a lot of zombies, haven’t you? They were just anonymous dead things wandering about but this one—this means something to you.”

“Yes.”

Benedict squatted down and pressed his hand to the man’s shoulder.

“Listen,” Benedict said, “you’re going to have to let go of him, even though it hurts. Because he’s—he’s not—he’s part of something different now. He’s gone and holding on is only going to hurt you both. It’s dangerous, all right? You’ve just—got to let him go. You’ve got to end it.”

“I can’t. Please. You have to understand.” the man said, his fingers trembling around the gun in his hand.

“I do,” Benedict said, “believe me, I do. And that’s why I am telling you that the sooner you let go, the easier it will be.”

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to end,” the man said, “we were supposed to be—”

“I know. This isn’t the life any of us wanted, believe me. You can’t even begin to imagine how different my life was before all of this happened. But you have to grow and change and part of that means having to let go, and sometimes that includes letting go of someone you love.”

“Do you think it’s what—what he would have wanted?”

“I do,” Benedict said, “I absolutely do.”

The man cocked the gun and placed it to his friend’s temple.

“Forgive me.”

There was a gunshot and spray of blood and brains worthy of any horror film, but Benedict couldn’t bring himself to watch.

“Do you need a moment?” Benedict asked.

“No,” said the officer. “I just—you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I can’t stay here forever.”

“Come on.” Benedict said, placing his arm around the officer’s shoulder, and they walked back to the car.

The ride back to the outpost was quiet as each man considered what he was leaving behind. There was no going back after this, and Benedict knew it. Selfishly, he wished that the car ride would go on forever, that the road would never end and he could carry on in that tiny forbidden world in which Martin would always be his. He didn’t even try to stop himself from thinking it – the thoughts were going to come whether he shut them out or not and holding them back was only making them hurt more.

Benedict parked the car next to the gap in the chain-link fence.

“You can head on in.” Benedict said.

The officer nodded and with a slam of the car door, he was gone.

“Me as well?” Martin asked.

 _No_ , Benedict thought. _Stay forever. Just stay with me. Because I’m stupid and I’m selfish and I’m in love with you_.

“I just need a moment.” Benedict said. Martin nodded and squeezed Benedict’s hand. He didn’t slam the car door behind him – he shut it lightly and carefully, just the way Benedict had instructed him to that morning on the highway.

He knew there was a name for what he was feeling, a concise little package of letters forming a word that could contain the slow-brewing maelstrom within him. He closed his eyes and traced his thoughts backward, remembering the borrowed heat of Martin’s body and the well-earned beads of sweat collecting on his skin and the soft arch of his back. He’d known from the start that the clock would run out for the two of them; eventually the food supply would dwindle down to nothing and the roads would crack and the bridges would crumble and they’d be left standing in the wreckage of barely-remembered past. He knew that once he walked through that outpost door, he was saying goodbye to the life he’d stolen.

Benedict left the car and headed through the chain-link fence. He started down the hallway and pushed through to the common area.

He watched in silence as Martin held his daughter in his lap, gripping her hand tight. Amanda was sitting at his feet, holding their son and glowing with contentment and relief. It was the sort of scene that this zombie-infested world did not deserve – it was made for summer evenings spend on an old wooden deck, looking on as the stars took their places in the sky, the product of a love that Benedict could only imagine.

 _This is why we’re still here_ , Benedict thought, _this is why we saved each other – for this moment and all the moments like it that will follow. This is love_.

For the first time since the end began, Benedict wiped away a tear – not born of grief, but gratitude.


	10. Chapter 10

_Epilogue_

Benedict stood at the edge of the roof and waited.

The gun they’d given him still felt awkward and unfamiliar on his hip but Officer Harris had insisted that he carry one just in case. At first, the other officers had been unwilling to accept some posh, fluffy-named Englishman into the fold but Martin came to the rescue, regaling them with the story of how “this one time, Ben killed six zombies at once.” They grudgingly admitted that, yes, it sounded like a rather remarkable kill. Word spread through the outpost about Benedict Cumberbatch: that tall man with the ginger curls who “killed twelve zombies with a single swing of his axe” – it hadn’t taken long for errant chatter to mold the story into something a bit more fantastical. Occasionally, he heard people whisper _Sherlock Holmes_ as he walked by but he barely remembered who that was anymore. He knew that the apocalypse had changed him – he sensed it in his limbs and in the way each of his smiles felt hard-won and demanding, like his heart was weighing down his lips.

This particular morning had started like all the others: he’d woken up with the sunrise, showered, dressed, grabbed something to eat from the kitchen, slid his gun into its holster and ventured outside to check the traps for zombies. Sometimes the traps would be crawling with them, mangled zombie feet hooked into the snares. He’d stand a few feet back and watch the zombies writhe in his direction, hissing and growling as they stretched their rotting arms in his direction. He’d put a stop to it courtesy of a gunshot to the head, a splash of kerosene and a lit match and then he’d head back to the lookout on top of the outpost roof.

And there he’d stand, pacing high above the ground, eyes fixed on the horizon.

At first, it had been easy to ignore Martin. There was so much to do, like target practice and hourly patrols of the surrounding roads and besides, Martin was so busy with Amanda and the children that even if he and Benedict had _wanted_ to sneak off to some remote location for a quick fuck, it would have been impossible. And it was better this way, Benedict had realized. Proximity had a nasty tendency to beget desire and he still didn’t trust himself to keep from kissing Martin, or even reaching out to let his fingertips graze his skin. But the days wore on and chipped steadily away at Benedict’s resolve. His dreams were restless scenes of highway kisses and slick skin and thievery and he’d wake in his bunk, twisting against his sheets, hard as anything and angry at himself for being unable to whip his heart back into shape.

“Meet me,” he’d whispered one evening, right after Martin had finished reading a bedtime story to all the children at the outpost, “tomorrow morning, on the roof. I have patrol duty until lunchtime.”

And so he waited, standing beneath the hot pink sunrise clouds, looking out for zombies but mostly listening for the metal slap of Martin’s footsteps on the fire escape.

“Benedict Cumberbatch: Zombie Killer.”

He’d been focusing so hard on imagining Martin’s footsteps that he was barely prepared for the flip in his heart when he heard Martin’s voice. It wasn’t that same gregarious tone he employed when talking with other people at the outpost, or the loving whisper he used when he spoke with Amanda, and Benedict realized there were some aspects of Martin’s being that really had been saved just for him.

“Morning, Martin.”

“How’s, er, zombie patrol?” Martin asked.

“Good. Took care of last night’s traps and one of the officers will be down later to clear out the remains. It looks like today will probably be kind of slow, but you never really know anymore. How are you?”

“Also good. Amanda’s busy with the kids and I’m—helping as much as I can.”

“Your leg’s still okay?”

“Oh yeah, it’s fine. It just didn’t have a chance to heal properly because I kept fucking arou—because I kept, you know, not letting it heal.”

“Mmm.”

“They finished fixing up the van, you know,” Martin continued. “It’s looked better, but did you hear they’re going to start using it to transport supplies to other camps and outposts?”

“Yeah, I heard them talking about it yesterday.”

 _What did we used to talk about?_ Benedict wondered as he stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned to face Martin. But he knew the answer—they used to talk about each other. They’d made that critical mistake of getting far too wrapped up in one another, and Benedict remembered that stupid _stupid_ inadvisable voice in the back of his head, tempting him with the ideas of Martin changing his mind and choosing him. Delusion had been so damn easy but now he was left with the truth, that there was no place for them in the past or the future.

 _Maybe we missed our chance_ , he thought _. Maybe if we’d gone a different way. Turned down a different road_. He held the past few days up to the light and tried to look for cracks, tiny hair-fine vulnerabilities they could have slipped through together, hiding away from anything that would keep them apart. He bit his lip and willed away every guilty thought, remembering the glow in the eyes of Martin’s children when they’d accepted that _yes he was real and he was home to them_ and the way Amanda liked to run her fingers through Martin’s hair as he was reading and how, when Benedict looked at them, he saw something more complete than his heart could ever comprehend. _Complete_ , he thought _, but easily broken_. All it would take was one word or one wayward brush of his hand against Martin’s skin or one lusty-eyed look in his direction and suddenly there would be things like _suspicion_ and _jealousy_ and heartbroken doubt and unaccepted apologies – and he knew that all of it would be his fault. __

“Did you tell her?” Benedict asked, lowering his voice just a touch.

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“I’m not sure,” Martin said. “It’s not that I think she wouldn’t be okay with it. After all, she _did_ say that you were allowed to be my one-night-stand freebie. But I sort of—and I can already hear how foolish this sounds in my head—I sort of like that it’s just between us, you know? It’s this little sliver of something that’s just ours, like a seed that was planted in one world but bloomed in another. Does that make sense?”

“Oddly enough, it does.”

“What you and I had,” Martin said softly, “it’s done now.”

Benedict waited for his heart to break and when it didn’t, he almost wished it had. He wasn’t sure if there was closure without heartbreak, if he could truly leave this behind without having his heart ripped out of his chest in the process. It was a breakup in its own right, a formal dissolution of their tenuous union. But his heart kept beating and the decaying world kept turning, even though his orbit around Martin had slightly changed its path.

“I know.”

“It doesn’t mean I don’t love you anymore. I still feel it, just so you know,” Martin said. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I still am very fucking much in love with you. I don’t know how to _not_ be in love with you at this point. It’s like when you’ve been denied something for so long and you finally get to have it and you completely overdo it. I think that’s what I did with you. I had too much.”

“Like the cigarettes,” Benedict said. “You get it now.”

“I wish it hadn’t taken us until the fucking zombie apocalypse to figure this out.”

“It would have been worse if we had known. We’d have been sneaking around, trying to hide things from everyone—it would have been a mess. What I want, Martin, is for you to be happy. Always. You’ve been given a miracle. This is your happy ending. Or happy beginning. Or whatever you want to call it.”

“But what about you?” Martin asked, and Benedict tried to ignore the hint of tears in Martin’s eyes. “I don’t like thinking about you being alone.”

“I’m not _that_ alone,” Benedict said. “It’s not so bad here. I’ve got zombie patrol and there’s work to be done. I’m looking after people. Protecting people. It’s—something I’ve always sort of wanted, I suppose, that feeling that I’m needed. It’s not the same life I had before, but I gave up hoping for that during maybe our second night at the hotel. We’re rebuilding the world and we’re starting here.”

“You can tell me if you’re not fine. I’ll understand.”

“I am fine.”

He meant it, too. Because Martin was right – they’d had their moment – sweet and brief and beautiful and ultimately _theirs_. It never would have happened in the old version of the world – they would have continued on their parallel paths, straddling the lines between lust and fantasy, remaining ignorant of their want for one another. There would have been no kisses or roadside confessions or steamy nights on unfamiliar sheets. He’d had too much, not enough, and all that he could handle – and all from Martin.

“I want to kiss you one last time,” Martin said. “I don’t like thinking about never getting to kiss you again.”

“I’m not yours to kiss anymore, though.”

“I know,” Martin said. “But it was good, wasn’t it? Everything that happened?”

“It was good.”

“You don’t regret it?”

“Martin,” Benedict said. “I’m going to say this once and I want you to remember it because I don’t know if I can deal with saying it again. I was head over heels fucking smitten with you from the moment I laid eyes on you. I knew that, even though I was never going to have you, I was going to spend the rest of my life comparing everyone to you. You’d be the standard by which everyone else would be judged, and you’d never even know. And the fact that I even got that sliver of us, that tiny little piece of you, is more than I could have ever hoped to have. So, no, I don’t regret it. Not a second of it. Because you were what I wanted, what I’m always going to want, and I was lucky that, for even just one second, I had you. Even if you weren’t really mine, for just a little while, it was a lot easier to pretend you were.”

“Ben, this hurts.”

“Good,” Benedict said. “that means you love me.”

Martin looked around and when he was certain that no one else was watching, he left a soft kiss on Benedict’s cheek.

“So it’s done.” Martin said.

“It’s done.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“This isn’t like that first kiss on the highway,” Benedict said. “It _has_ to be over now.”

“Even though I’m still in love with you?” Martin asked.

“Even though I’m still in love with you.”

“I do wish that I could tell Amanda about your dream though. The one where you woke up hard, screaming my name.”

“Martin, don’t you fucking _dare_.”

Martin grinned and nudged Benedict’s shoulder.

“I should let you get back to zombie patrol.”

Benedict nodded.

“I lov—yeah. Sorry I’ll just—yeah.”

Benedict looked on as Martin trudged down the fire escape, one uncertain step at a time.

“We were lucky,” Martin said, turning back to look at Benedict. “You can’t deny it now.”

“We weren’t lucky,” Benedict said. “We survived.”

Martin nodded, and Benedict detected the slightest beginning of a smile on Martin’s lips.

 _This is where it starts_ , Benedict thought as he walked along the edge of the building. He thought about whether or not planes would fly again or if he’d ever see his family. He thought about what the group was going to do when the food ran out and the desert offered up no alternatives. He thought about Martin and how he’d done everything so Martin wouldn’t be alone. The hotel nights, the scrounged-up food, the bone-crushing heave of his axe, it had all been for him. Every bit of it had been to keep Martin from being alone. Benedict held his breath and smiled as he thought: _he just wasn’t supposed to be ‘not alone’ with me_.

He had no way of knowing how it would end. No one did.

These were still the earliest days of the end of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’m not usually into author’s notes but I figured I’d be remiss if I didn’t say thank you to everyone who’s been reading this fic over the past two months. I started writing this because I wanted to read some zombie-related Sherlock RPF and over 40,000 words later (goodness gracious) I think I can safely say that such a thing exists. I can’t even believe anyone besides me wanted to read it, to be honest, but I am so pleased that you did. Thank you. <3

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary lyrics taken from "Crazy He Calls Me" as performed by Billie Holiday.


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